How to lead when the rules keep changing: a complexity toolkit

The past few weeks have given us a stark reminder of how unpredictable and unstable the current business environment can be: a global trade war and advancing AI technologies alone are enough to cause any leader confusion and anxiety.

But the truth is that we’re always navigating multiple layers of change, cascading unpredictably, disruptions often conflicting with each other, pointing in different directions—especially in a global environment with different national interests.

In No Point B, I argued that traditional change management tools are broken because they don't acknowledge this reality. It's comforting to look for a neat arc from disruption to stability—from point A to point B. But disruption has no end point, and complexity offers no quick answers for making sound strategic decisions. How do we lead through it without over-simplifying or paralyzing our organizations?

First, let’s lay down a few ground rules for operating in complexity, drawn from systems thinking, complexity theorists, and behavioral science (plus what I've seen work on the ground):

1. Embrace decentralization and adaptive leadership

Complex systems thrive when local actors have the autonomy to respond in real time. That means shifting from control to coordination—enabling teams closest to the work to experiment, adapt, and own solutions. As a leader, you have to learn to make fewer top-down decisions, and act more as a facilitator for empowered teams.

2. Create and leverage systemic feedback loops

In complex systems, small changes can create big ripple effects. Building in feedback loops—formal and informal—helps you see what's working, what isn't, and where the true value lies. Sometimes it’s as simple as asking better questions, more often. Sometimes it means visualizing the system to find non-obvious choke points. Either way, it's about designing for feedback and flow, not control.

3. Foster holistic collaboration and diverse thinking

The more complex the challenge, the more important it is to break out of silos. The best ideas often come from the collision of perspectives—across teams, disciplines, or even geographies. Set up structures and rituals that make those collisions possible—then get out of the way.

4. Balance stability and flexibility

Complexity doesn’t need to mean chaos. You still need stable scaffolding—clear goals, processes, and norms. But within that, you need to find the sweet spot between structure and slack: space to pivot, time to explore, and permission to take risks. Innovative thinking often lives at the edge of the map, at the edge of chaos (but not quite all the way in it).

5. Prune low-value complexity

Not all complexity is valuable. Sometimes things are complicated for the sake of being complicated. Audit your systems, tools, and workflows. What is driving value, and what is just noise? Then reinvest that energy into the kind of adaptive capacity you’ll need for what’s next.

Complexity is inevitable in large organizations, but it doesn't have to be scary. Successful leaders will create conditions to find beneficial patterns in the ecosystem—not just specific outcomes.

Tools and techniques to help

To make navigating complexity easier at the team level, here are some specific tools and techniques I've seen work that leaders can apply:

• Scenario stack mapping: Don’t just plan for "scenario A" or "scenario B." Instead, build a layered stack of concurrent likely scenarios, e.g. one for regulatory shifts, one for evolving technology, one for public sentiment. Assign different teams or roles to monitor and update each layer. This distributes vigilance and avoids single-point failure when one layer shifts suddenly.

• The "truth tiers" framework: Help your team break free from binary thinking by organizing facts and assumptions into three categories: (1) known and stable, (2) known but shifting, and (3) unknown but critical. This mental model keeps decision-making grounded while staying alert to new data and emerging signals.

• Pre-mortems for anticipated shocks: Run "pre-mortems" not just for launches or products, but for potential disruptions. Ask, for example: "If this tool didn't exist tomorrow, what would break?" Doing this proactively surfaces risks you can mitigate before they become real crises. It builds a culture of proactive agility.

• Regional navigators: Appoint team members to act as "navigators" for specific regions—responsible for tracking local developments in policy and technology. Give them space to brief leadership regularly. This is especially helpful for global teams. It builds intelligence based on on-the-ground experience, and integrates helpful perspectives into strategic decisions.

• Multi-horizon planning: Don’t just plan for this quarter or this year. Don't just make a strategic plan on one time horizon. Build roadmaps for simultaneous time horizons that acknowledge complexity, e.g. this year, the next 2-3 years, and 10+ years out. Then make active investments in all of them, based on your best understanding today. It's not about being right about what will happen—it's about acknowledging you have to operate with imperfect data.

Complexity isn't going away

The hard truth is that we've built our business best practices around assumptions about how the world works that are no longer valid. But we can do better—not by pretending complexity doesn’t exist, but by developing the tools, rituals, and shared language to practice moving through it together.

If you're a leader waiting for things to calm down so you can "get back to business," I have bad news: this is how business works now. But you're not powerless. The leaders who will thrive in 2025 and beyond are the ones who are willing to reframe their roles—from having all of the answers to facilitating better questions.

How is your organization handling the uncertainty and market shifts from 2025? Have you found any complexity navigating superpowers you didn't know you had? Give me your stories.

Take the next step:

1. Book me for a keynote presentation or workshop at your next event.

2. Hire 18 Coffees for a training workshop on building adaptable leaders who can manage change.

2.  Follow me here on LinkedIn, or watch me on Instagram or TikTok.

3. Sign up for Pocket Change, my monthly newsletter on disruptive trends and insights into the future of leadership.

4.  Let’s work together! Reach out to 18 Coffees for consulting help with complexity and rapid change.