Everything, everywhere, all at once – transforming chaos into a catalyst for change – embracing the power of complexity
After its Oscar success, you must have now heard of Everything Everywhere All at Once. As the title suggests it’s funny, chaotic, and cathartic. My 14 year old son recommended it to me when it first came out. He is on the autism spectrum and obsessed about movies. He is able to gain control of life through movies. He can choose the story, pause the play to process the information, and watch it as many times as he needs to understand what is going on, especially in relationships. I bet we could all benefit from a remote control like this in our lives.
The story of Everything Everywhere All at Once takes us on a journey with Evelyn Wang, played by 60 year old actress Michelle Yeoh. She is at rock bottom, undergoing a tax audit of her business, yet she can’t focus. Someone is trying to tell her she has powers that she doesn’t know about yet. By the end of the movie, all her prior lives have contributed to her superpower that enables her to control the current crisis and find a more compassionate way forward, in the process accepting who her daughter is.
Out of the chaos comes meaning and direction. And unless you pay attention to everything everywhere all at once, you can’t leverage that dynamic energy to change everything, everywhere, all at once. As Daisy Auger Dominguez said in the Inclusion Revolution “we cannot fix decades of structural inequity by tinkering at the margins. It's important to remember that we are still building, iterating and trying to see what is working to transform the workplace. This is not about burning down the house, but living in construction.”
At this moment in my life, I feel a little like Evelyn. All my past life experiences as a professor, behavior scientist, burnout survivor and mentor are coming together to allow me to guide you through the current work-life crises. I want to show you how you can harness that chaos through behavior change science and become a confident, credible agent of change.
The whole way we work is changing, which means your role as a leader is changing, and in fact now many leaders are expected to be agents of change. Has your job description suddenly changed to being a coach and agent of change, but you were never trained in leading behavior or culture change?
Are you ambitious and want to land that CEO job but you are not being given the leadership opportunities to help you gain the experience you need to lead a large scale, complex, ever-changing, global business? So many CEOs have acknowledged, businesses that stand still, stagnate. Change and growth is a business imperative. But how can you learn that dynamic ‘big picture’ thinking while you are still stuck in the weeds?
Are you are fed up with the current status quo in the world of work for women and you are frustrated about giving out band aids? Like self-care as the answer to burnout, unconscious bias training to solve racism, and egg freezing to retain female managers. You are probably also exhausted from leading through this chaos and keeping your own shit together, while having your leadership style questioned and judged by those around you.
Don’t worry you are not alone! Any authentic leader will admit that the past few years have been rough. It’s not surprising as leaders navigating our organizations through these rough waters, that we have had to launch lifeboats, apply band aids and employ our best guess work to survive. Unfortunately, the need to lead with impact & provide return on investment is greater than ever, in more uncertain, challenging & complex times than ever. Where everything, everywhere, all at once matters.
My leadership program can help you harness the power of this current complexity and use it to discover new and innovative answers based in a scientific process.
There are 3 parts to my experiential leadership development program:
1) Asynchronous online individual training on science based tools and processes to help you lead change
2) A science based facilitated team process called a ‘peer learning collaborative’ to help you build out the skills you need to lead change with feedback and support from other women leading change
3) Organizational implementation of these processes through a roadmap, championing team leaders and rewarding organizational change. In this way my program helps you move from individual, to team, to organizational change.
So I believe in everything, everywhere, all at once. Embrace the complexity and leverage it. Not in a chaotic, headless chicken approach, rather in a thoughtful, organized, science based process, where you know where you want to go, you have a clear road map, and tools to keep you moving in the direction of change. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, you can trust in the process and be confident that you will make progress. And with each successful iteration your confidence and credibility increase. And when complexity and chaos are conditions that you expect and present as opportunities for change, your calm and considered leadership will be contagious. In some ways it doesn’t matter where you start because everything, everywhere, all at once is interconnected, the root causes are common across so many workplace issues, and the ripples expand in all directions. However, since everything is connected, barriers can also extend over multiple spheres. If you don’t address them properly for one issue, they will rear their ugly head again later. Hence why I recommend a more comprehensive approach long term that addresses the root causes and prevents problems reoccurring.
Given the complexity and chaos of the last few years, with little sign of more certainty in sight, it is essential to have a calm and clear way to embrace the continuous change cycles and leverage them for increased learning and opportunities for growth.
Daily behaviors create our social norms, our workplace cultures, and demonstrate our lived values. When we understand the processes that lead to successful behavior change, the strategies that support successful behavior change, and the behaviors that lead to the desired outcomes, we can find the levers to solve the complex human problems we face. You can also then focus on impacting the evidence-based drivers of change with confident investments not empty promises. I get it, change is scary but while we keep buying bandaids and wellness branding we are wasting time and money.
It is time to embrace change, embrace complexity and throw out the keep it simple stupid mantras. Work-life problems require understanding the forest and the trees, require preparing for forest fires, and being able to plan, act and adapt as a leader. When you understand the complex lives we all lead you will have more compassion and more entry points for providing support and solutions.
If you want to know more about my Women Leading Change program please contact me through my website or on LinkedIn at Dr Jacqueline Kerr.
