Is Chaos a "Bad" Thing? Or is it Something we just have to live with?

The past few years have taught us well: Chaos is relentless. We’ve had a global pandemic. Supply chain upheavals. An army of quiet quitters (and some pretty vocal ones, too).

HOBOKEN, NJ, July 2023— Oh, and here comes ChatGPT to add its own brand of disruption. And that’s not counting the “lesser” chaos that comes with the day-today management of people.

For most leaders, the impulse is to put your head down, hope the storm passes you by, and look for a brighter day tomorrow. But Gary Harpst says you’re looking at chaos all wrong. It’s inevitable. It’s not a “bad thing,” and we’re best served by leaning into it.

“Every one of us is capable of bringing order out of chaos,” says Harpst, author of Built to Beat Chaos: Biblical Wisdom for Leading Yourself and Others. “In fact, we need chaos. It’s a raw material resource that we can transform into purpose and growth. Our job as leaders is to facilitate this transformation in ourselves and in our teams.”

So…how do we cope with and master chaos? Here are a few tips:

Clarify the why behind what you’re doing. Leaders and employees must be clear on purpose in order to focus on the problems that must be solved. Otherwise, the chaos of pursuing too many opportunities will slow and distract you.

“A world with too many opportunities to pursue is just another form of chaos,” says Harpst. “Just be sure that the vision or purpose you choose is not too vague. When this happens, it is difficult to guide resource allocation in a way that gets results.”

Stop using chaos as an excuse to be a victim. For example, a manager might say, “I can’t promise to build the new training program and roll it out by the end of the first quarter because I get so many requests for custom reports and other support issues. I can’t plan my work.”