Same Leader. Different Reality.

Thomas had built a reputation for making sense of difficult problems.

An engineer by training, he had spent years managing situations where the answer was rarely obvious, but usually discoverable. Get the right people in the room. Look at the data. Challenge the assumptions. Run another scenario if necessary. Eventually, the fog would lift.

It was one of the reasons he had been promoted.

His new role was different. He was now responsible for a business entering an unfamiliar market, with new customers, new competitors, and technology moving faster than the company could comfortably predict.

Thomas responded as Thomas knew how.

He asked for more analysis.

What are we missing?

What assumptions are we making?

Can we model another scenario before committing?

Thomas was doing what years of experience had taught him responsible managers do when the stakes are high. Except that this time, more analysis wasn't producing much more certainty.

The problem had changed.

Thomas hadn't.

*****

Not Every Problem Lives in the Same World

There is something hidden in the way we talk about managerial experience.

We assume experience teaches us what to do.

It does. But experience also teaches us what kind of situation we believe we are looking at.

Is this something we have seen many times before?

Is there an answer that expertise can uncover?

Are we dealing with something that nobody can fully predict yet? or

Is the situation moving so fast that understanding must temporarily wait while somebody stabilises it?

These are very different managerial realities.

Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework gives us a useful way of distinguishing between them. It was developed as a sense-making framework: a way to understand the nature of the situation before deciding how to respond.

In a clear context, cause and effect are sufficiently understood. We have done this before. There are practices and procedures that work, and inventing a new solution every Tuesday would add little value.

In a complicated context, the answer is not obvious, but it can be discovered. We need expertise, analysis and judgment. Different experts may even arrive at different good answers.

Then there is the complex context. Here, the answer cannot simply be uncovered because part of it does not exist yet. Customer behaviour, organisational change, an emerging market, the interaction between people after a major transformation: we may understand afterwards why something worked, but predicting it reliably beforehand is another matter. We need to interact with reality and learn from what emerges: we can understand the patterns only in retrospect.

And sometimes we are in chaos. The system is unstable enough that analysis is no longer the priority. Something should be done to stop a crisis or some sort of organisational bleeding. The immediate action needs to stop the damage and restore enough stability to make sense of what is going on.

None of these worlds is inherently more sophisticated than another.

And none of the managerial responses is inherently better.

The trouble starts when we bring the right response into the wrong world.

*****

Four Good Managers, Four Wrong Answers

Thomas was treating a complex situation as complicated.

His instinct was not foolish. It had been trained by years of solving difficult engineering problems. There was an answer, even when he couldn't see it yet. So when uncertainty increased, analysis increased with it.

His new reality contained a different kind of uncertainty, however. Some answers would become available only after the company entered the market, tried something, watched what customers actually did and learned.

Thomas kept asking:

What information are we missing?

Perhaps the more useful question had become:

What information can only be generated after we move?

*****

Elena had spent years in operations. She was very good at bringing order to places that needed it. Processes became clearer. Responsibilities stopped overlapping. Variations decreased. Performance became predictable.

Then she was asked to lead a cross-functional transformation involving Operations, IT, Sales, Marketing and Finance.

Her first instinct was entirely understandable.

She created governance. Templates. Milestones. Decision rights. Common processes. More consistency across teams.

Elena was bringing a clear-context reflex into a complex environment.

She looked at variation and regarded it as a sign of insufficient management.

But in this new context, some variation was information. Different teams were still discovering different things because nobody yet knew exactly what the future operating model should look like.

The discipline that had once protected performance was now at risk of removing the very experimentation from which the organisation could learn.

*****

David had built his career differently. He was the person people called when things went wrong.

A plant problem. A customer escalation. A critical project turning red.

David could walk into confusion and create direction remarkably quickly. He reduced noise, established priorities and made decisions while others were still debating.

In chaos, this ability can be invaluable.

Then David moved into a strategic leadership role.

The questions changed. Which capabilities should the company build? Where should it place its bets? What should it stop doing? Different people held different pieces of reality, and some consequences would not become visible for years.

David still felt the same discomfort when things remained unresolved.

We need a decision. So he made one.

At first, people appreciated his clarity.

Over time, something else happened: the complexity didn't disappear. It disappeared from the conversation.

 *****

And then there was Adrian.

Adrian had learned almost the opposite lesson.

Years in strategy and product development had made him suspicious of premature certainty. He listened well. He could hold contradictory perspectives without rushing to resolve them. He asked what the team might be missing.

Then a serious operational incident landed in his organisation.

Adrian gathered people, asked questions and wanted the different perspectives on the table before deciding.

These were excellent instincts in the environment that had shaped him.

But this time the organisation needed containment before understanding.

His complex-context reflex had entered chaos.

For once, his capacity to remain open to ambiguity was not helping.

The situation needed someone to close possibilities, at least temporarily.

Experience Also Teaches Us What to See

I don't think these four managers have an adaptability problem.

Something more interesting is happening.

After enough years, a successful managerial response stops feeling like a response.

It starts feeling like good management.

Thomas no longer thinks "Analysis worked well in the kinds of problems I used to manage."

He thinks serious decisions require serious analysis.

Elena doesn't think "Standardisation was valuable in a mature operational system."

She has learned that variation signals a need for management.

David has learned that ambiguity eventually needs someone willing to decide.

Adrian has learned to distrust the person who decides before understanding enough perspectives.

Each lesson contains wisdom. And each can also become a trap.

One of the most interesting parts of Cynefin is the space where we don't yet know what kind of situation we are dealing with. Snowden has called this disorder, and more recently confusion.

What do people tend to do there?

They fall back on the way of acting they know best.

That feels remarkably close to what happens during many managerial transitions.

A promotion doesn't simply give you bigger problems.

Sometimes it gives you a different kind of reality.

And experience can make that harder to notice, because the reflex you are being asked to question is often the same reflex for which the organisation has spent years rewarding you.

The Situation Changed Before You Did

There is a comforting interpretation of experience: the longer we manage, the larger the repertoire we accumulate.

Perhaps.

But experience also leaves grooves.

We learn what deserves attention, what signals danger, how quickly a decision should be made, how much evidence is enough, when to involve others and when to take control.

Eventually, these judgments become fast enough that we barely experience them as judgments anymore.

That may be one of the less visible challenges of moving into more senior leadership.

The new role does not necessarily ask you to abandon what made you good.

It may ask something considerably harder: to recognise when what you are very good at belongs to a different situation.

Which of your strongest managerial instincts are you still trusting because they fit the reality you are managing, and which because they once made you successful?

**********

If you sense that the context around you has changed and your role needs to adapt with it, you need to consider yourself to be in a leadership transition even if your title and formal responsibilities haven't changed. Such a transition asks more than learning something new. It may require reconsidering which of the ways of thinking and acting that served you well still fit the reality you are leading.

If this sounds familiar, we can explore it in a 1:1 Executive Coaching conversation.

How can I support you?

The Executive Mindset - From senior performance to enterprise-level leadership and business maturity.

The Manager Mindset - One-on-one coaching designed to boost your performance and enhance your sense of fulfilment and satisfaction in life.

Master Your Resilience - Group coaching that helps you navigate life's challenges with greater ease and flow, empowering you to thrive through adversity.

Growth Mindset for New Managers - Your online autonomy training is designed to catalyse your personal growth and ensure your fast transition to your first management role.

Strategy Conversation (FREE) - Let’s craft your personalised roadmap for transformation. Discover where coaching can take you in just 6 months with a free, strategic call to set your path toward success.

On the Same Topic

When the context changes, experience does not automatically recalibrate with it. These three articles explore what happens when ways of thinking and leading that have proved valuable in one reality continue operating after the role, the level of leadership or the situation itself has changed.

That’s Just Who I Am!
What happens when directness, control or speed have become part of how you understand your effectiveness as a leader? This article explores the difference between abandoning a strength and learning when that strength needs recalibration.

Experience Does Not Prepare You for the C-Level Transition
Experience can earn you the next role without fully preparing you for the different kind of thinking that role requires. A closely related look at what changes when managerial maturity has to catch up with a new level of responsibility.

When Operational Strength Becomes a Strategic Limit
Operational strength creates results, credibility and often promotion. At a more strategic level, however, the same strength can shape what you notice, where you intervene and how you continue to define valuable work.