Are you in a Nothing Works work situation? 12 ways to improve it.
Ever been in a leadership position where nothing seems to work? Where despite people showing up, attending meetings, and producing deliverables, strategy execution falls flat and organizational energy dissipates into internal conflicts?
Andy Grove's "High Output Management" provides a framework for understanding this phenomenon through two critical factors:
- Personal Interest: Motivation is primarily Self vs. Group (company).
- Environment: Working situations are Low vs. High VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity).
These factors imply three modes of control that managers can rely on. There are pros/cons to each, the key is selecting the right one for the situation.
Contractual Obligations: Effective when group alignment exists in stable environments (Think: manufacturing plants, expense reporting policies)
Free-Market Force: Suitable for stable contexts where individual autonomy adds value (Example: legal contractors, AE’s managing their sales territory)
Cultural Values: Critical when high group alignment meets rapid change (Example: tech startups, M&A re-org teams)
The Chaos Quadrant
The most challenging scenario is high VUCA combined with strong self-interest. This is where traditional management approaches fail, and it often feels like NOTHING WORKS! We all faced this during COVID, and many organizations have not recovered. And events in markets and the world have extended and amplified both the level of VUCA and degree of self interest in the average employee.
If you suspect you are in (or near to) the Chaos quadrant, you need to transition to another quadrant. Either reduce VUCA or increase Group Alignment. Here are 6 suggestions in each category:
Group Alignment
Return to office to enable connection and interaction
Explicit communication and focus on values and culture
Invest in group events, offsites, recognition
Deploy collaboration platforms - Slack, Teams, Chatter
Invest in training and development that emphasizes collaboration, group learning, and peer coaching.
And my favorite, as it is real: Align on a shared purpose and mission. Easier for start-ups, but works anywhere if done effectively.
Reducing Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity
Revisit and update core business processes - sales cycle, customer management, supply chain, onboarding, etc.
Increase goal alignment - top to bottom and across all departments - OKR or similar (including software packages)
Focus on performance management to ensure success criteria clear
Simplify roles with organizational and role design
Streamline strategy and GTM focus
Remove or reduce the chaos-creators in the organization. This is harder to do if they are leaders, but work to blunt their impact.
Two situations merit special consideration. New hires, and new turn-around leaders.
New Hires
Anyone joining an organization will be looking for people to follow and guideposts to success. If you are in a near-chaos organization, be very prescriptive about both. Assign mentors explicitly, create clear playbooks for onboarding, and carefully manage and check-in frequently during the ramping process. New joiners should help de-escalate the chaos, but they need to be guided there.
Turn-around Leaders
In an organization where nothing is working, bringing a new senior leader from the outside is a common fix. And they may need to make drastic changes to be successful, possibly a complete strategy revamp to tamp down the VUCA, and churning a majority of the team to gain group alignment. But, along the way to these outcomes it is worth investing in smaller changes. Get to know the current team to see what might be driving self interest, and address it. Make interim changes to process, incentives, policy, to see the effect of increased clarity and certainty.
If you are a leader in a “Nothing Works” environment, first ask if you are part of the problem. Address that first. Then look for changes that can nudge the organization into a scenario where self-interest and organizational success become naturally aligned. Often small changes in the right areas, applied consistently and with patience, will have outsized effects.
