It’s hard to come up with a better way to change your mind right now.
Chaos theory is the theory of mathematics that reality must be understood as dynamic and unpredictable. Chaos is characterized by the fact that the outcome cannot be predicted from its initial state. When you look at our current operating environment, that’s the chaos theory in it.
Chaos theory also includes a parable of how a butterfly’s wing strike can trigger a chain of events that leads to a storm on the other side of the globe. The war in Ukraine has been a shock to the whole world. However, the current situation feels like an inverse butterfly effect. We have faced a raging storm, the consequences of which are expanding globally to the smallest detail. We do not yet even understand what the effects of this war will be.
When chaos is on, it is human to try to structure the world around us by all available means. There has been a good demand for expertise. The number of Twitter followers from experts at the Foreign Policy Institute and the National Defense College has grown exponentially in recent weeks. These foreign and security policy professionals have done valuable work in telling us what has happened to us ordinary celebrities. Expertise brings comfort to the midst of chaos.
However, with the banging of butterflies ’wings, the ability to think things through a whole new perspective rises, if not past the value of expertise, at least alongside it. Namely, the new reality requires new truths, even those that even the experts we trust do not yet know. New truths can only be achieved by briskly breaking old myths and overthrowing holy cows. This, in turn, requires the courage to change your mind and with it to act differently.
In companies constantly updated strategies are commonplace. The butterfly’s wings fluttered all the time. In politics, on the other hand, finding a new direction has traditionally been a slow task. Changing one’s mind, turning one’s coat, has been downright despised.
The damage that comes from finding a green pro-nuclear pro-NATO demar or a member of the Coalition Party who is critical of the Fennovoima nuclear power plant is effectively freezing the views of politicians who are still considering their positions.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant discusses this in his book Think again changing one’s mind and its necessity behind new perspectives and thinking. Grant encourages us to consider why we may have been wrong with our views in the past – instead of focusing, justifying ourselves and others why we are right now.
Such a way of thinking frees us from the compulsion to be right. This, in turn, provides an opportunity to see new policy options. Grant points out that the leaders of former successful companies like Kodak or Nokia, for example, failed to think. They failed to change their minds and thinking as the operating environment changed.
Pandemian and acting in a war-torn time requires new thinking and new ways of doing things. Now if ever there is a reason to be flexible in what you believe in. It’s downright hard to come up with a better way to change your mind right now. This is an opportunity that everyone in charge should take.
Let’s go back to chaos theory. Its developer, James Yorken, is said to have said, “The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.” Besides, changing one’s mind has a silver lining – the sooner you realize you’re wrong, the faster you get to be right.
The author is the CEO of Ellun Kanat Consulting.
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