The Science of Managing Crisis and Chaos: Illusions of Control and Clarity of Purpose perspectives

All of us come across dis-orders and crisis and things that go really badly in life that stalls us, freeze our brains and hasten our decision making. In that case, usually we end up with the completely wrong approach to the issue. Regrets, naturally comes afterwards. On the other side, one has to be open and honest. These are my thoughts and stuff I decided to put off my chest. Importantly, let;s keep in mind that Knowledge, Action, Sincerity and Consistency should be our formula.

The recent rains and floods in various counties in Sudan have confirmed to me that the crisis is not just planning roads infrastructure and treating human life of citizens seriously. It is also a crisis management incompetency. Hearing the official’s dis-oriented/ridiculous announcements about being surprised by rains during autumn and dis-valuing the lives of those affected, I came to the conclusion that, despite those officials are to blames for gross failure, there is something within us that need to be corrected. The extremely poor situation we are in in Sudan has reached unrepairable levels. Lack of reliability, quality of every single work done in all sectors across the board and lack of purpose in every action taken whether personal, commercial, social,etc. Such scary level have inter-linked reasons that explains it and those reason have to be addressed/discussed.

When talking about chaos and crisis, what is normal becomes a question. As crisis tend to deviate us from our normal routine. We set our lives to be normal and panic when up-normalities occur. You tell me, we plan it to be normal, we know what we want and we work to get it. We remove all hurdles from the way and get our target. I say, I am afraid; you are in an illusion of control. This is bigger than this. You need to know the bigger picture, your PURPOSE, DIRECTION and check your CONTROL.  In a country like Sudan with an ever unpredicted environment and unique set of people relationships, we tend to relax to the prospectus of things going on as ‘normal’ for a short time. Unfortunately, we forget that a normal life is the one that is free of illusions of control and the one that TIME is valued and productivity is No 1 priority.

In our approach, are we confusing Actions with Results? The question is do we accept that we are turning into headless chickens without DIRECTION, PURPOSE and CONTROL? 

This reminds me of the ‘black Swan’ theory by Nassim Taleb in this 2001 book Fooled by Randomness describing events inappropriately rationalized within the benefit of a hindsight. Those events have minimal probability of occurrence but devastating impacts.  What is striking about black swan theory are the psychological biases and the state of staying in blind spot and uncertainty. Increased efforts to control the situation make things difficult and the system becomes unpredictable. Recent news of those robbers announcing floods on microphones and robbing people houses after they fled in horror confirms this. 

Unfortunately our ‘Black Swan’ has become normal and is seen frequently and the hindsight has turned into excuses (Rain is rare, people should be cope with it, we are shocked by amount of rain, etc). It is the illusion of control and lack of understanding of life as a crisis management exercise.

Crisis and Chaos management has three main aspects: i) planning- which involves the control of time, sequences of events, etc., ii) Clarity of purpose and ii) Direction/orientation. We tend to focus on the first; however, I think the latter two are what really matters.

ii) Clarity of Purpose:

We have decision making muscles, we do? How strong are yours? In order to get things done in life you need to follow DECIDE, ACT, GET cycle.

 Do we know what we want? If what we want is to fix those crises as they come and wait for the next, then we have DECIDED. Next we help those affected (ACT) and we GET things reverted to ‘normal’ (as we understand it).If what we want is to manage the crisis (DECIDE), then our ACTion would be different and might lead to not only preventing this crisis from happening but other ones. What we GET in this case a new DECISION to ACT upon and GET and the cycle goes on.

The more you enter DECIDE, ACT, GET cycle, the more you exercise and the stronger your decision making and ACTION muscles become. In fact, you are training yourself to WIN. Each completed cycle is a win and a win will psychologically bring more wins. There is nothing worse than Deciding without Action and the worst is Acting without GETting. Spend a minute to imagine the feelings during similar examples that happened to you of failure to get.

This cycle is the fundamental building block of the process of getting what you want and seeing it happening. It comes with exercise, exercise of wining cycle after another until you train your decision making and action muscles and attain a new perspective of approaching life. Boasting about Action seems obvious and you might find it cheesy but statistically 96% of people in the world population lack clarity of purpose (what they want), only 4% does and those are rewarded with high levels of success.

iii) Direction/Orientation

DECIDing is not easy by the way. You need to know your direction first to decide what to do to get there, isn’t?

How do you set your direction? Unfortunately it is usually set by mood. In particular, in Sudan, moods prevail. Examples are countless(a short car ride will tell you). Acting based on what you feel, despite naturally is more preferred to us, and is actually very costly and scary. Our moods changes so often and with the sightless of reasons. Could you afford to base you success in DECIDE, ACT, GET cycle to your mood?

Navigate by desire. Desire of action, of getting what you want done.  Desires are natural within us and are there to get fulfilled. Set aside good and bad desires for now and focus on your basic life desires, getting promoted at work, going for a holiday, buying a new car, etc. Even bad desires are easily achievable with this cycle approach; it is all about clarity and direction.

The decision is Ours, shall we stop and clarify our direction and purpose or shall we let the wind of crisis wiggle us like a Ping-Pong. It's Our call. DECIDE now? ACTion comes naturally after you know what you want. Reward of GETing surely will be tasteful. You for sure will GET what have you DECIDed and this is governed by your cycle length, so DECIDE now.

Next Insha’Allah ‘The art of decision making: Can you afford not to excel it?’. Some practical tips for  'illusioned' environments  and in un-decisive culture like Sudan.

Hassan Hamdoun

18^th August 2013 , 1:30 am