The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:00:07 - 00:00:40:10
Kevin Eikenberry
Chaos. We seem to experience it every day, but we don't have the tools to help us deal with it effectively and confidently. Today, you can start building that toolkit. As we talk about the uncomfortable topic of chaos, so that you can understand it and better use it, and build a framework to help you use it rather than lose it in the moment.

00:00:40:12 - 00:01:15:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Chaos. We seem to experience it every day. Yet we are prepared to do more than survive it. But turn it to our advantage. Are you able and willing to do that? Today we're talking about this uncomfortable topic. To understand it better and to build a framework to help us use it. Rather than lose it. Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders like you grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger, positive difference for their teams, organizations and the world.

00:01:16:04 - 00:01:37:01
Kevin Eikenberry
If you are listening to this podcast, you could have been watching it live where you can't now because you can't go back. But in the future you could join us live. We'd love to have you do that. The way to do that is to get connected with us on either Facebook or LinkedIn, which are just two of the platforms from which we do these live streams.

00:01:37:06 - 00:01:59:08
Kevin Eikenberry
And so you can go to remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linked in to get connected and find out when we're doing these live so you can join us. Then. So with that let me bring in my guest and we're going to talk about chaos. And we're going to do it in a non chaotic way. My guest today is Kevin Black.

00:01:59:08 - 00:02:30:09
Kevin Eikenberry
He's a former excuse me. He's a veteran US Army officer. Kevin thank you for your service. He's a strategic advisor, an author and the founder of Chaos Studies in Leadership A New domain exploring how leaders, strategies and behaviors intersect under pressure. He's the author of Strength in Chaos The Ultimate Leadership Blueprint for Mastering the Uncontrollable. It's the first book to measure chaos at the leader and team level, and this is the first conversation he's had.

00:02:30:11 - 00:02:38:08
Kevin Eikenberry
First podcast conversation he's had since the book came out. And I'm happy to be first. Kevin, welcome. Thanks for being here.

00:02:38:10 - 00:02:41:08
Kevin Black
Oh, it's an honor. Thank you so much, Kevin.

00:02:41:10 - 00:02:50:20
Kevin Eikenberry
So we should probably start if you're the guy that wrote the book Strength in Chaos, we should probably start with your definition of chaos.

00:02:50:22 - 00:03:12:14
Kevin Black
So, okay, I'm gonna give you my definition. And, report. There's three things we have to keep in mind. First of all, chaos. The definition of chaos is a progressive state of disorder, a progressive state of disorder. So to to be clear, it's not disorder. It's not just having a messy desk. And it's not also a crisis. Those are two very different things.

00:03:12:16 - 00:03:35:14
Kevin Black
A crisis, for instance, has, a crisis has usually a bad ending, or you're avoiding abandoning chaos. You can have bad, you can have good, you have excellent. It's just different levels of stress. The second part that you have to remember, which is really, really critical here, is that the source, the source of chaos, is the perception of losing control.

00:03:35:15 - 00:03:51:00
Kevin Black
Now this is really important to perception because, Kevin, you and I could go to a bar and grill, we're having lunch, and next thing you know, there's a grease fire in the kitchen. And the fire hits the wall in me being me. I jump up, grab my hair and scream, bloody murder. We're all going to die. Start panicking you.

00:03:51:00 - 00:03:54:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Somehow I doubt that the Army veteran. But go ahead.

00:03:54:14 - 00:04:20:17
Kevin Black
But you will go to the door. You be like an old crusty fireman. All right, guys, all right. Slowly, orderly. And you perceive the same facts differently. So that's why, I mean, it's the perception of losing control. And the third part of this, the third part that you have to remember is we all see chaos differently. The drive for the driver of chaos, the thing that makes us perceive it differently, generally speaking, is personality.

00:04:20:19 - 00:04:49:12
Kevin Black
But personality is very broad. That includes work experience, life experience, religion, philosophy, psychology and business. It's too much of a big package to to measure, to scale. But there is a subset of personality. What we call natural behaviors and natural behaviors describe how we do things. Some people are fast, some people like ditto. But natural behaviors can be measured scientifically.

00:04:49:12 - 00:05:02:06
Kevin Black
And if you can understand people's natural behaviors, their natural profile, you are more inclined. You're better positioned to predict how they will act when they perceive their losing control. Does that make.

00:05:02:06 - 00:05:18:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Sense? Yeah. And it's really important that you're saying, basically what we're trying to do is improve our odds of how they're going to react because we really don't know. And we certainly can't control that. For sure. So what's the big idea of the book?

00:05:18:08 - 00:05:39:10
Kevin Black
The big idea is to provide order to a thing which technically has no order. You know, chaos. Chaos is, there really is a blueprint to it. There really is taxonomies that, if you understand it, you can leverage it and turn it to a competitive advantage. But most people don't. You know, chaos is usually considered a pejorative, a pejorative for the word change.

00:05:39:12 - 00:06:09:05
Kevin Black
But really, what it is, it is an inevitable aspect of life, especially in teams. Chaos will always exist. There is always some type of stress dealing with direction, working with people, leadership, trust, reliability. You're gonna have to deal with that one way or the other. And if you know how to deal with them, if you know the taxonomies at the scale of how to gain strength, then you're not going to fall into, I call, destructive chaos, where teens going to dysfunction and they lose or, they lose effectiveness.

00:06:09:06 - 00:06:33:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Okay. So we're going to get into destructive chaos, constructive chaos, all those things in a little bit. I'm curious. And you told me something before we went live, which you may or may not choose to share. That's up to you, but I but the question I have for you is why are you uniquely the person to write this book, to have for us to have this conversation, for you to write this book, to talk about this idea of chaos and using it to our advantage.

00:06:34:02 - 00:06:40:13
Kevin Black
Why thank you. I think you probably need my need to ask my ex-girlfriends about that. But, I did.

00:06:40:13 - 00:06:45:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Not know that is not the purpose of this podcast, everybody.

00:06:45:11 - 00:07:07:08
Kevin Black
I would tell you, I spent nine years writing and this book has gone through two transitions. And I realized at 1.3 years ago which, I did research and there's no books that measure chaos. You know, there are books out there about ship captains going through a storm. They're experiencing chaos. But the books about the captain, there are no books about the storm and how it affects different captains.

00:07:07:10 - 00:07:25:19
Kevin Black
And I realized it was this new year. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I gotta I just got to do this. So, yeah, I spent three years writing this and it didn't all come at once. It came in, it came in a, just different, secession. First you have constructive destructive, but I just realized that there's a huge opening here.

00:07:25:21 - 00:07:37:02
Kevin Black
I'm comfortable. Chaos. I love chaos, but there are people who I work with who don't. And I've always wondered why it is. And so I went through a mental exploration, going through this book. Oh, does that answer your question?

00:07:37:05 - 00:07:56:06
Kevin Eikenberry
It does. It does. So, you've said a couple of things. You said one thing already that I think most everyone would probably agree with, that that change is inevitable. Excuse me, excuse me. Chaos is an inevitable changes to. But talking about chaos today, that chaos is inevitable. You said that it's one of things you're talking about in the book.

00:07:56:10 - 00:08:21:19
Kevin Eikenberry
There's a couple other things that you that you talk about that I think are really useful and interesting. And I'll go here next, because you mentioned natural behaviors. You say in the book that natural behaviors are the drivers of chaos. What do you mean by that? And how does that impact our understanding of this as leaders?

00:08:21:21 - 00:08:45:02
Kevin Black
Well, natural behaviors again it's a subset of personality. It defines how we act. And the fact that they can be, scientifically measured is a huge predicting force. So as in natural behaviors, I mean, almost like our natural instincts, some of us are big picture, some of us are perfectionists. Just just, you know, by the age of six, 6 to 8 years old, we've developed some kind of profile.

00:08:45:04 - 00:09:07:18
Kevin Black
Some of us are very extroverted, some are more quiet. Some people like to plan, some people just like the plunge in those natural instincts. Again, this is the manner of acting, not the motivation. This is just how we naturally act. Those particular ways of acting, can define how we react to chaos. The perception lose, lose control.

00:09:07:22 - 00:09:32:05
Kevin Black
It also defines our reactions to it. People who are very control oriented and big picture, if they feel chaos coming off, they feel they're losing control. That is a natural impulse to just knock people away. Get out of my way. I got to do this because I feel like I'm sinking. The perfectionists would say, you know what? We are compromising our quality if there's too much disorder.

00:09:32:07 - 00:09:54:14
Kevin Black
And and just by their body language, the things they say, they can intimidate others just by body language into not talking, not just not participating, not engaging. And when that happens again, the team loses its effectiveness. It's no longer a unified team. It becomes it can also become siloed into groups. And with that happens you have half the team working towards a goal, a common goal.

00:09:54:14 - 00:09:57:22
Kevin Black
We have other teams doing their own agenda.

00:09:58:00 - 00:10:17:05
Kevin Eikenberry
So you're saying then, that the unique makeup of our team, whomever is on our team, all having their own natural behaviors, is, is the place from which the chaos arises. Is that a safe way to say that?

00:10:17:07 - 00:10:42:12
Kevin Black
Yes. Specifically, I write about this thing called the chaos dynamic. And this really explains how chaos in the team comes up. So I say it's a dynamic. It is a it is an exchange, an interplay of emotions between team members and the leader. And this and if you're only speaking, three things happen. Number one, stage one. And I think of this cycle, number one, the team perceives something's missing.

00:10:42:17 - 00:11:02:22
Kevin Black
Now it could be you know, well you're never going to see perfection. So there's always gonna be something I Mary could have talked to me a little bit more or we don't know where we're going. Something is missing. Number two, the leader reacts. And now what does that reaction mean? Are they actually addressing the issue or are they ignoring the issue or are they addressing the issue halfway?

00:11:03:00 - 00:11:23:16
Kevin Black
Once that second stage happens, then the third comes, the team reacts to the leader's reaction. And that's where the behaviors really come in. For instance, let's say you have a leader who is very soft spoken and they're about process and they're about relationships. They come in and they, they, they want make they want people to feel safe.

00:11:23:21 - 00:11:44:11
Kevin Black
Despite, you know, I know things are rough right now, but we can make this together. You can have people in that team, team members, subordinates who are so control oriented that their natural impulse is like, hey, the captain's not steering the ship. I need to step in and do it. And they cannot inadvertently sabotage team. Not not consciously.

00:11:44:15 - 00:12:03:17
Kevin Black
It's just so natural. Impulse we're at. We're at emotion here. Things are spinning out of emotion. I got to step in to do something. That's why you have to know who you're working with. Because, believe it or not, people, people want to do the right thing. But if they don't have the the, the, the right conditions, the right direction order, then you will find that people will step up.

00:12:03:21 - 00:12:17:00
Kevin Black
You'll find that some leaders will tighten their grip or tighten their grip because they think by tightening the grip, though of that they'll make chaos, preventable. And yet they're making people feel powerless and they're really quelling their initiative.

00:12:17:01 - 00:12:45:11
Kevin Eikenberry
You're hinting at the next thing I wanted to talk about, which was another one of your key ideas, is that control is the source of chaos. So we said natural behaviors are the drivers, but control is the source. And you've already said that, even in the subtitle of the book, that chaos is uncontrollable. So how how is it that we're supposed to deal with this paradox of you now saying that control is the source?

00:12:45:13 - 00:13:02:04
Kevin Black
Well, you have to engage. Okay. So, you know, when we say chaos, I want to make something clear. We're not talking about some invisible force. Chaos exists when teams exist and the team stops working together, the chaos is going to leave. Chaos in in essence, is just it's either it's a it's a type of stress. It can be you stress.

00:13:02:05 - 00:13:24:10
Kevin Black
That's a term I learned in high school a long time ago. Like, you know, you lift weights, you break your muscle. It can be a little stressful, but it develops strength. It could be stressful. But control. Here's the thing about leadership. And I know a lot of people, I've heard so many people talk about, you know, the command and control models, another batch that has it has a bad view, especially, you see, basic training.

00:13:24:16 - 00:13:48:20
Kevin Black
But here's the thing. If you're a leader, you are responsible for controlling your team. The question is how do you control your team? Do you prudently learn to relinquish control, to invite initiative, to make them empowered, to take the initiative on the ground without you being there, while restricting them to their objectives? Or do you tighten controls? Or are people in process where every decision has to come through you and you sabotage your own?

00:13:49:01 - 00:14:09:07
Kevin Black
Your own, your own position? Control is a necessity in life, and it's in is a necessity in leadership. It is is critical, critical for a leader to learn how to relinquish control and how to get comfortable that telling a control oriented person to relinquish control is not the easiest thing. It is not their, their first instinct.

00:14:09:09 - 00:14:32:07
Kevin Eikenberry
It is not their natural behavior. So, so I want to talk more about control. It's, you we've now mentioned the three parts of your chaos model, and we're going to unpack them. And I want to start with controls. And that's where we just were. And you talk about a variety of control outcomes that I would say sit on a continuum.

00:14:32:09 - 00:14:45:15
Kevin Eikenberry
My word. So let's talk about that a little bit in terms of these control outcomes. You just hinted at it a little bit. So let's just unpack that just a little bit more. And we'll put together two pieces of the framework together okay.

00:14:45:17 - 00:15:04:18
Kevin Black
Okay. So you and your apps I control continuum. So for the audience here just imagine a straight line on one side is no control. You have a leader there but the leaders is not they're not taking charge. And you have people really. This is called anarchy. This is the first level. Anarchy means and anarchy is not a bad thing.

00:15:04:18 - 00:15:23:03
Kevin Black
It is a struggle for control. If your leaders, they're not doing anything, you're going to have subordinates who are like the captains not there. We got to take we have to steer the ship. Now what happens is you have inner team fighting. It could be ugly. It could expose the leader. But the fact is that people want to be there and they want the team to be a success.

00:15:23:08 - 00:15:46:13
Kevin Black
So if you're if you're the issue about anarchy is the leader in position, does not know how to take charge in a way to manage their subordinates, especially the control oriented ones. The next on this continuum, we're going from no control to complete control. The next is what I call undisciplined initiative. Now this is where you have a leader take a sales executive who is marvelous.

00:15:46:13 - 00:16:08:11
Kevin Black
Just a real eye, real, expert in their field. They are now control. They're now in charge of the team of the company. And what happens is they will focus on sales, maybe marketing, but they'll leave the other things. Corporate communications, HR. They're like, hey, Mark, you deal that. You take care of that. So and undisciplined initiative again, people want to they want to be there.

00:16:08:12 - 00:16:34:22
Kevin Black
But you get successes. But they're inefficient. They're sloppy because the leader is selectively focused on some things. And not the whole. Finally, you go to next to that is really the ideal. This is called disciplined initiative. This is where the lead the team has come, a very professional team. They've learned to self-police themselves, hold themselves accountable. The leader has learned to prudently, relinquish control.

00:16:35:04 - 00:16:56:17
Kevin Black
And what that means is they have learned, they have learned and become comfortable with telling people what needs to be achieved and leaving it up to the team to do it based on the conditions on the ground. So the people are empowered. They want to be there, they're showing discretionary effort. They're doing everything necessary without the leader having to prod them.

00:16:56:19 - 00:17:11:08
Kevin Black
That is the ideal. But that's right on the border. That's around the border because what happens is if a leader gets too much control, you fall into the fourth control outcome. And that's called mechanical compliance. And that's that is what it sounds. That leader has created.

00:17:11:10 - 00:17:12:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Whatever you say, boss.

00:17:12:22 - 00:17:36:04
Kevin Black
Yes, yes, I'm waiting for the weekend. I'm pulling a lever and pushing the button. They become disenfranchized. Okay. The boss wants to do this. Okay. I'm not. I'm not going on my way to help you. The next one. Malicious compliance. That's when. That's when apathy turns into resentment. That's when the boss becomes such. They could become so absent or bully that.

00:17:36:06 - 00:17:39:05
Kevin Eikenberry
If that's what you want, that's what you're going to get.

00:17:39:07 - 00:17:58:06
Kevin Black
Yes, sir. Yeah. And they will do it to punish the boss. Now, when you get to a malicious compliance, the team is really losing their effectiveness because what you find is people fall into silos. People now have certain people have access to the boss and they know they're safe. Other people who don't have access, boss, are now pushed away.

00:17:58:10 - 00:18:24:20
Kevin Black
You have silos. You have the team fighting against one another. And then, Kevin, what happens when that when that kind of malicious compliance turns into real resistance? The outcome is deliberate resistance. This is where and this is a really bad this is a really bad control outcome. It's not just your boss may be a bully or an absentee boss, it's the fact they become unethical that you cannot trust them, or even maybe the institutions that promote them.

00:18:25:00 - 00:18:45:12
Kevin Black
And that's where. And I'll give you a great example, Disney. If you look at this in the past couple of years, you have executives leaking private, conversations of the senior executives. Why? To embarrass them, to embarrass the company? Because they feel that they have been stabbed in the back, that they have been betrayed. And that is their way of trying to correct course.

00:18:45:14 - 00:19:04:12
Kevin Black
So, again, and that's on that continuum, it goes from no control to total control. And you can actually see in a circle, because if you have an organization is trying to eat itself up, you know, the idea is to get rid of that leadership and start over again. And guess what? You have no control. And the continuum begins again.

00:19:04:14 - 00:19:23:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. So the other two parts of your framework and, and we need to be careful in our time. But an and really, I wanted to go here because I think this is maybe it starts to become very helpful, especially helpful for people when they haven't had the chance to to spend time with the entire book.

00:19:23:19 - 00:19:51:23
Kevin Eikenberry
We're talking with Kevin Black, the author of Strength in Chaos. And so the other two parts of your framework are phrases you've already talked about, mentioned constructive chaos and destructive chaos. So, I would like to leave our listeners with what the difference is between those two things because they they wrote they're not in parallel in the framework, but they run in parallel.

00:19:51:23 - 00:19:57:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Right? Yeah. And so talk about each of them briefly.

00:19:57:02 - 00:20:19:12
Kevin Black
Okay. So, when you, when you, when you go back and look at the control scale, those first three, everything from anarchy to discipline initiative, if you look up, for the audience here, we're looking at a triangle. And that triangle on the left side is constructive. It's going up and destructive is going down on the on the right side, left up, right, down.

00:20:19:14 - 00:20:39:03
Kevin Black
And what you find is if you're in those first three control outcomes, you're in what we call constructive chaos. And what and what that means is you're using influence. People are engaging on their own agency. They want to support the team. When you go into destructive chaos, you have crossed into obedience. People are no longer acting their agency.

00:20:39:04 - 00:21:01:12
Kevin Black
They're acting on fear, constructive chaos and destructive chaos. Are there really? They are parallel. And since if they're opposites and there's an order. So for your audience here, if you want to gain strength and chaos, there's an order of things that have to happen. And this is the major taxonomy. The first thing that has to happen to gain strength and chaos is you have to have unity.

00:21:01:14 - 00:21:26:21
Kevin Black
Now, what does unity mean? It means not a group. It means a team. People are willing to work with one another. The way to put away petty differences and go about the same common goals with one another. It also means that your leader is capable of managing people issues. Very important. The leader has to be able to intervene and and correct and keep people accountable.

00:21:26:23 - 00:21:44:19
Kevin Black
If inner bickering happens, if you can do that and you have unity, you had the beginning of a professional team. If you do not do that, you have what we call disunity. And this is the this is the first level to destructive chaos. This unity means it means people or people in the team are not working together.

00:21:44:19 - 00:22:01:20
Kevin Black
It means the team in a leader's not working together. It also means at an operational level that the team is not working with other teams, cells that work with marketing. It could mean that, that some teams are actually going rogue in the organization. They're doing their own thing, but the whole the whole idea is that you do not have a unified whole.

00:22:01:22 - 00:22:21:03
Kevin Black
You have people or teams doing the wrong thing, executing their own agenda. Why? Because the leader is not capable of aligning them. That is the first thing you have to get unity. You get the people working together the next level up. Once you have a team, you have a professional team. You need what we call direction to order.

00:22:21:03 - 00:22:52:23
Kevin Black
Now this this is the most complicated one of the chaos model. This is called forward integration. And I'm sure the lot of consultants out there are going to be laughing because you could forward integration is four distinct disciplines in corporate America. It is a combination of strategy knowing where, knowing where you're going, organization, making sure that you have the right people, execute that strategy systems making sure that people can work together efficiently in a predictable sense.

00:22:53:01 - 00:23:18:17
Kevin Black
And it's a culture is a culture based on chaos, resilience, adaptability, risk taking. You have to have all these four things in an aligned, one, cohesive whole. You can't just have, a strategy and just hire Joe Schmo to do the job without knowing what are the behavioral requirements of this role? What is his strategy? Asking for security or speed?

00:23:18:18 - 00:23:43:23
Kevin Black
Are we grabbing? Are we land grabbing because we're a growth company, or are we a big company, a legacy company? There's so many different things you have to keep in mind, but they have to be aligned. If you get those things aligned, then you have what I call forward integration. You have the direction the, you have. You have the strategy that directs or the organization that connects the systems that enable and the culture that animates.

00:23:44:01 - 00:24:01:09
Kevin Black
That is the most complicated one, because those are four distinct consulting disciplines, and it's not rocket science, people. Just where are we going? How do we get there? Who's the right person to lead it, and what values do we need to make this a success? If you do not do this, I'm sorry. You got to say something, Kevin.

00:24:01:13 - 00:24:01:19
Kevin Black
No.

00:24:01:19 - 00:24:02:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Go ahead.

00:24:02:18 - 00:24:22:19
Kevin Black
If you do not do this, the chances are you're going to fall into what we call disorientation. Disorientation is the second level down in destructive chaos. What does disorientation mean? It means people are asking, what are we doing? How do I work here? What am I supposed to be doing? Where's the team going? And what you find is it's a chain reaction.

00:24:22:23 - 00:24:43:14
Kevin Black
And usually my experience is because people don't have a clear strategy. They have task lists. Daily task list, but there are no strategic objectives. And what happens is there are no strategic objectives. You just hire people who technically look right on the, on their CV or the resume without knowing what behaviors you need. And the systems marketing.

00:24:43:14 - 00:25:06:13
Kevin Black
I have system salesman, I have a system HR, I have a system, but they're all different. That's disorientation. Now key to disorientation is the leader. And this is really key the leader. And try to use a correct word here. The leader might be called inept and that this means that they don't have the knowledge they can learn, they don't have the knowledge of how to connect.

00:25:06:14 - 00:25:26:03
Kevin Black
And I would say this is one thing, Kevin, I learned in the military, despite all my experiences. You know, when you go through basic training and you go, you work with different units, you learn the same language, you learn the same planning. You could write a battle plan and leave. I could pick it up. I mean, I agree with your strategy, but I know exactly what you're doing because I know those particular words.

00:25:26:03 - 00:25:44:21
Kevin Black
I know that language. I know that format. I can anticipate how this is going to go, but there's so many organizations who don't do that and so different, different teams or like little different business units working, at the behest of a central leadership. So that's the that's disorientation.

00:25:44:22 - 00:25:59:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So we got two more pieces. Let's talk about them. Let's just talk about it on the constructive side, okay. When people can make the connection, especially the last one, they can definitely make the connection to the to the other side. So, give us the third of the four in the, constructive chaos side.

00:26:00:00 - 00:26:21:04
Kevin Black
Okay. So, so we have unity people are working together. We have we have, forward integration. They have direction order. The third is called Mission Command. Now, the audience here may laugh. Mission command is a type of philosophy of leadership that every executive wants, but they sometimes are reluctantly look at because it is a military philosophy that comes from the Germans.

00:26:21:06 - 00:26:45:05
Kevin Black
But what it is, is a it is a philosophy of decentralization. It really is about trust, sharing information, not not keeping information, hiding it, sharing it, getting people involved. It's about creating the kind of conditions that people are expected and rewarded for acting on their own, showing their own initiative for either contributing to the strategy so that it's called the philosophy of mission Command.

00:26:45:06 - 00:27:07:03
Kevin Black
It is a philosophy that the US Army has tried for decades to adopt, and they still cannot. There are many reasons why, but the fact is it's about shared knowledge, empowerment, the challenges for leaders. You have to know you have to you have to adopt a uniform type of speaking, a place so people can anticipate and predict what you're going to do.

00:27:07:07 - 00:27:27:03
Kevin Black
But you learn, you have to learn how to give up control. And that is a very, very difficult thing for many people. It's very difficult for me. I am a very ordinary person. I struggle with it. But the organization has to learn how to prepare for how to develop mastery. People can be act, can be expected to act on their own, and they are rewarded for doing so.

00:27:27:07 - 00:27:47:12
Kevin Black
It's also a philosophy of accountability, of high accountability. So, that that is what they call mission command. There are a lot of books written about a lot of articles, but I think I think I explain it in the book. So in essence, leadership plus management, those two things. And once you have all those, why don't you have a team that is that unified has direction order that is led.

00:27:47:14 - 00:28:14:08
Kevin Black
The fourth and the final level of constructive chaos is trust. Trust is not something you earn on day one. And chaos trust is is verified reliability. That means I can trust you, Kevin, to keep the team unified, to create forward integration, to relinquish control in a smart and prudent manner. If you can do that consistently, not deliver once, 2 or 3 times you have developed trust.

00:28:14:14 - 00:28:36:15
Kevin Black
That means I can. I can count on you to deliver where most teams fail or stumble. If you can do that and you have gained what I call, strength and chaos. And what happens is I have seen teams that do all four things consistently achieve productive power. And it's the difference between an airplane and a jet. It develops so many new capabilities.

00:28:36:17 - 00:28:49:01
Kevin Black
And if you're a senior executive and you have teams to do this, those team now, those teams now are paragons for development. You could use those teams to help support your other teams to develop and gain the same kind of, competencies.

00:28:49:03 - 00:29:09:09
Kevin Eikenberry
So, Kevin, we've just tipped the tip of the iceberg here, if you will, and there's, there's a lot more in the book. And, and if you if as a listener, if you found this to be valuable and insightful, then I'm strongly and encourage you to get a copy of Kevin's book, Strength in Chaos. If you're watching, you can see me holding my copy here.

00:29:09:13 - 00:29:26:22
Kevin Eikenberry
It's not it's not a short one. But, but I want to do this, to have you give us one practical thought before we start to round out this conversation. And that is this. Where would other than buying a book, where should people start?

00:29:27:00 - 00:29:28:07
Kevin Black
People start.

00:29:28:09 - 00:29:31:19
Kevin Eikenberry
In terms of applying the ideas that you've talked about today.

00:29:31:21 - 00:29:55:02
Kevin Black
Oh, gosh. Number one. Number one, you accept chaos as inevitable. It is not a sign of failure. I write in the book specifically that, look, because we're humans, we can think beyond the moment. We can. We form expectations. That's very distinct to us. We form expectations about the future. But there's this thing called reality, and there's always going to be a gap between expectations and reality.

00:29:55:04 - 00:30:13:03
Kevin Black
And because we had those, we had that gap, we are expected to improvise. The stress will always be there. So chaos is not a sign of failure. It's going to be there. You have to know who you are and your team. And this is the big thing. People. The team, not you. The team is the measure of success.

00:30:13:07 - 00:30:37:06
Kevin Black
You may show great leadership tactics. It doesn't matter if the team doesn't deliver. That team is your instrument, your unit. You have to be able to work with them to leverage leverage that. So just realize chaos is inevitable. Know yourself. Know your team, and the team is the measure of success if you do that. I think that's the first step of learning, of accepting the very thing that everyone seems to be terrified of.

00:30:37:08 - 00:30:55:16
Kevin Eikenberry
All right. Awesome. So I have three more questions. Quicker than pretty any of the rest so far. And, you know, I have found and if you're a long time listener or viewer, you have found as well, you've noticed as well that the folks who are joining who join me on a weekly basis are passionate about their work.

00:30:55:18 - 00:31:14:10
Kevin Eikenberry
It's one of the things I try to suss out in selecting my guests. And, I'm curious what when you're not being passionate about chaos and helping others understand it and work work through it for their success. What do you do for fun?

00:31:14:12 - 00:31:20:09
Kevin Black
I raise my blood pressure by playing computer war games.

00:31:20:11 - 00:31:31:23
Kevin Eikenberry
That everybody 518 episodes. And that's the first time, that's been the the result, resulting answer. So what are you reading these days? Kevin?

00:31:32:01 - 00:31:58:15
Kevin Black
I just got, I just, downloaded a enormous PDF. Very quickly. Back in the late 1970s, during the Cold War, the American army would bring in, German generals who fought the Soviet Union. And there are transcripts that they had these huge conferences getting huge conferences. They bring these German journals and, and these a 400 page transcripts of these leadership conferences and the Americans, like, how do we fight the Russians?

00:31:58:21 - 00:32:15:02
Kevin Black
And they would go through these wargaming and you could read verbatim, verbatim what these, generals were saying, the all these senior officers and it's, it's a very unique way to be a fly on the wall to see how senior leadership, different cultures perceive problems and, and make decisions.

00:32:15:04 - 00:32:34:00
Kevin Eikenberry
All right. Awesome. Again, everybody, a first, to have the transcripts of a conference from the 1970s be the thing that our guest is reading. So, Kevin, the thing you probably most wanted me to ask you all along is, where can people connect with you? Get the book. What are the next steps in terms of them?

00:32:34:00 - 00:32:35:12
Kevin Eikenberry
And you?

00:32:35:14 - 00:33:00:12
Kevin Black
So, please, Kevin Black, 1999. Kevin Black on LinkedIn. You'll you'll find me. The book is on Amazon. It's a Walmart. It's a Barnes Noble. I, I'm very, very proud of it. And I would tell you, this is the book that I wish I, I, I wrote and I had read and I have a great testimonial from Colonel Douglas McGregor, who's I was actually, on the short list of being a secretary to, Secretary of War.

00:33:00:14 - 00:33:24:06
Kevin Black
I would, yeah. So Kevin Black dot my website. Kevin Black that co not com co.com is the country singer Kevin Blanco. Look me up if you have any questions I would love send me some questions. I would love to answer them. I'm really, really passionate about this new subject. And follow me on LinkedIn and, I'll keep you updated to, new updates and what's coming up.

00:33:24:08 - 00:33:56:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Kevin Black black.co and the chaos book.com. So before we go, everybody, I want to remind you that this episode has been brought to you by, my latest book, the, the excuse me, flexible leadership. And you can learn more about flexible leadership by going to Kevin Eikenberry. Dot com slash flexible. Now before we go, I've asked all of the questions that I have time to ask Kevin, but I still have a question for you, dear listener.

00:33:57:00 - 00:34:20:20
Kevin Eikenberry
And that question is this. Now what what are you going to do now? What action you're going to take? There's some thing or things that you heard from Kevin that that hit you. They were the things you needed to hear. They were the things that you needed to learn and understand today. And that's great. But none of that matters if you don't take action on what you heard or learn.

00:34:20:20 - 00:34:40:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So my challenge to you is to take action on what those things are for you to think about those places where perhaps chaos is causing you to stumble rather than being seen as just inevitable. And how do I move forward? And so whatever those next steps are, I hope that you will take those. And I hope that there's one more.

00:34:40:19 - 00:34:53:02
Kevin Eikenberry
So before I say this, Kevin, thank you for being here. It was a pleasure to have you. And so there's one other thing that I hope you all do. And that's to come back next week for another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. We'll see you then.