Book excerpts - Ch2(E12): Find your way to the NBA.

Harnesing complexity and confusion for optimal decision making

The existential conflict between the Next-Best-Action and the Worst-Possible-Outcome increases during events that require transformative creativity.

The complexity of changes and the availability of skills shift and re-interpreted quickly. Carrying with it anxieties and confusions.

When we get stuck, our instincts guide us to take actions that we believe will be most viable for preserving progress. But in conditions of complexity and uncertainty - recognizing these steps could be more complicated and require us to get out of our skin. Can we do it in a frictionless way while we are stressed?

Knee-jerk reactions or system-one insights are based on prior knowledge. Therefore, they will work until they don't - which will spike stress and require exploration at the worst possible time.

All advisors, mentors, coaches, and experienced colleagues have recipes for doing things in their arsenal. But the problem is that the amount of recipes is overwhelming. And the degree of their fit to your context is often unclear.

The lean cycle, and the mindfulness-based practice of ACT, narrow the choice point into a binary decision. Pivot or persevere, or continue or change direction.

Now, all we have to do is make the right choice on what to persevere and where to pivot.

If we can find our way to the NBA (Next-Best-Action) without undermining Flow, we could potentially enjoy a perpetual frictionless and rewarding transformation.

And this means one thing. Catching wicked problems quickly or running after them faster before they escape us.

In the following sections, I will introduce the fundamental principle of Things-To-Be-Done thinking and then show you how we can narrow any complexity to a set of Next-Best-Actions.

Important disclaimer, to perform the Next-Best-Actions, we first need to direct our attention toward critical lacunas and develop the capabilities to attend to them.

This may seem like a detour, but it's actually the fastest way towards resolving complicated stuckness - if you calculate the time and chance of wasting it into our creative resolutions.

Things To Be Done will help you maintain focus during two critical activities: finding root cause problems and tailoring solutions that get us unstuck.

It's not a miracle solution, only a simple and effective way to direct creative attention, which seems like the next best action in conditions of complexity and confusion.