Coping with Hyper-Uncertainty

Why did you decide to offer this program now?

Business leaders have always faced uncertainty. But today, every business is confronting a much more extreme degree of uncertainty. The future has become very hard to predict. Will we go back to offices or not? What will consumers want? Which technologies will be important? What will competition look like? How will national and global politics evolve? What is the future of supply chains and how can a business create supply chain advantage? That is what we mean by turbulence.

At this moment, none of these questions have an obvious answer. Leaders face a bewildering number of unknowns. In this program, we want to help executives understand how they can still make important progress under these conditions—how they can make major, courageous decisions when the landscape is so uncertain.

How does this program stand out?

First, it blends strategy and leadership—about half and half. Many executive education programs focus on leadership but don't delve into strategy as much, or vice-versa.

Second, it is laser-focused on the challenge of extreme uncertainty. While the list of topics in the program might seem similar to other strategy or leadership curricula—for example, we talk about value-based strategy—the conversations are different because we will continually focus on how the approaches that we have traditionally relied on need to change to address this new level of uncertainty.

Finally, the three-module format gives participants practical ways to experiment and implement what they have learned while they are still in the program.

How does the three-module format help executives implement what they've learned?

The first module consists of four days on campus, consisting primarily of case-based learning, where we introduce concepts, examples, and frameworks centered on designing strategy and leading in the midst of uncertainty. For the second module, which spans about four months, executives are back in their workplaces but they continue to move through a structured curriculum for the program—one designed to complement and enhance their daily lives as leaders at work in organizations. During the second module, participants attend active learning sessions in the Harvard Business School live online classroom, try some experiments in their own work environment, and also complete some asynchronous learning at their own pace.

The participants come back to campus for the last module, where we explore the business environment in the broadest sense, tackling big topics like climate change, global inequality, and the rise of forms of government that are less democratic. We also raise very personal questions like who you want to be as a leader, and how you will make an even greater difference.

With this approach, participants have an extended period of time to experiment with changes they want to make in their organizations. They can try out techniques and approaches they have learned in real-time, take advantage of the ongoing support and advice of faculty and peers, and develop new perspectives on the evolving challenges they are facing.

What are the benefits of blending strategy and leadership?

Our program confronts macro questions about where the global business environment is going, questions about where your organization is going and how it can sustain advantage—and also some very personal questions about where you are going as a leader. In particular, we explore how you can adjust your approach to leadership and increase your impact in the midst of so much uncertainty. For example, how can you provide effective leadership when your employees feel as though the rug has been pulled out from under them and they’re not sure what will happen next?

Why do executives need to adjust their approaches to strategy and leadership?

It's hard to make a "safe" decision today. Consider the example of office space. Some companies are signing new leases to expand their space because they have decided they need more space between people to create a healthier work environment. Other companies are selling off their real estate because their vision of the future is one where most people will be working from home. In the past, good strategy and good leadership have often come down to understanding what customers or employees want and need. If you didn't know, you asked them. But now, at a moment when they don’t know what they want, we need a different approach.

Companies want to know which changes will stay with us. The conditions brought by the Great Depression of the 1930s went away after a few years, but that experience affected people's behavior for decades. Leaders want to know which of today's changes are transitory and which are creating the new normal, but it's hard to predict this. In the program, we provide frameworks that help executives make decisions when they don't know what will happen. For example, we introduce a version of scenario analysis that decision-makers can use to design strategy in uncertain times. We also examine other leaders who operated under great uncertainty: what they learned, which tools they accessed, and how they became even better, even in intense turbulence.

How do you structure the learning during the four months of Module 2?

We break the module into four segments covering four main themes. Each theme has two parts—one more external and strategically focused, the other deeply experiential and more personal.

For example, one theme is time. The strategic part is about the speed of competition: Processes that used to be very complex can now happen very quickly, which has profound implications for how companies compete. We challenge executives to think about how they can manage speed as part of their strategy, and how, for example, they can transform fixed costs to variable costs to change the speed with which they can scale up or down. The other part of this time theme is personal time management. We explore a leader's priorities and how leaders can prioritize tasks and make adjustments to be successful.

With each segment and its two respective parts, participants can experiment with new approaches in their day-to-day work, discuss the results, and get feedback from their organization and from program peers and faculty. The live online sessions, experiments, exercises, and asynchronous work all relate back to that overarching theme. We weave these components together so that each type of learning reinforces the others.

Which executives will benefit most from attending this program?

Managing Turbulence is ideal for anyone with significant responsibility for business decisions about investments in money, time, or people—investments in new capabilities or new markets, for example. If you are making decisions that commit your organization, and if you have responsibility for a significant workforce, then you will get the most benefit from this program. It's less useful for very early-stage startups, given the leadership aspect, but executives from any size company, any industry, or any country can benefit. We welcome either individuals or teams of two to four people from a single organization. When more than one person attends, they can help one another implement the learning; that often leads to greater impact on the organization.

If you feel particularly uncertain now and want to learn how to make big decisions under these conditions, then this program is right for you. You might have some background and experience in traditional strategy frameworks—maybe you've even attended one of our strategy programs—but now you are facing a completely new level of uncertainty. This program provides new tools and new ways of thinking that will help you move your organization forward in spite of the uncertainty.

What do you hope executives will be able to do after leaving this program?

Turbulent conditions will persist for some time to come. The one thing we do know is that companies need to keep making smart decisions to move forward—no business can afford analysis-paralysis, especially when some of the answers we want just aren't available. We hope that through our program's cases and exercises, leaders will discover what has and has not worked well for others making decisions in a crisis or under highly uncertain conditions.

We expect participants will be better able to approach big decisions with greater confidence, help their organizations weather—and indeed, thrive in—the turbulence that is today’s business world, and take positive steps to build more resilient organizations. They will also be better able to navigate their personal uncertainties, gain a better sense of how their leadership approach needs to evolve, and determine what they can do to reach their goals. Finally, with the program's highly experiential format, participants will take immediate steps to implement much of what they learned and to discover their most effective approach to strategy and leadership going forward.