Macro Instability - The Ring of Fire

One benefit of aging demographics is that it decreases the percentage of the most volatile demographic of society, 18-30 year old males. Generally, a key ingredient in a country's internal instability is young men that have too much time on their hands. (There is far more controversy over this statement than you might think in terms of which ways the causation go, but here is one place to start if you're interested.) Youth unemployment is a step to understanding instability, which is why this interactive graphic from ILO is intriguing:

To aid the visual, the colors could have been toned down to a maximum of 40%. Upon closer examination, both visually and in the underlying data, there is a clear hot spot. It's what one could call "the ring of fire." Average youth unemployment for the region is over 25%.

Whether it's called Arab Spring, Mediterranean discontent, separatism, or Southern European unrest, this is a factor that a lot of on the ground managers have in the back of their minds, but is rarely explicitly stated. Greater unrest translates into lower tolerance for capital commitments. If "stuff can go south," there's a natural inclination to hedge, and those who commit the most into these situations are either very savvy on local conditions or subject to a series of winner's curses. Whether it's the world of leveraged buyouts or multinational expansions, one should take a good look at local players before making the leap.

Dealing with Certainty

I don't struggle dealing with uncertainty. I can gauge assumptions and risks quite well. Despite this, I also have no problems with a "ready, fire, aim!" mentality when urgency is required. If the train is pulling away from the station and the debate is jump or not, now is the time to make the decision. We move forward confidently knowing that we are acting with the best available information.

However, I do struggle with those that cannot deal with uncertainty, or rather, those that are 100% confident all of the time. Those few moments in which they do change their minds, they flip to 100% certainty the other way and say, "I was so dumb before, because I didn't know everything I know now." These are the "passionate" that show no difference in knowing 10% of the relevant information and 100% of the relevant information. In my experience, this is far more common in large corporations than small companies. One gets found out too quick in the small company.

When collaborating with this type, I've tried an array of strategies, but the vast majority of the time it bounces off like frozen marshmallows on a tank. Eventually I end up simply discounting their opinions and information, but that's not a long-term play at building a coherent team. I don't plan on giving up, and, like many things, the best approach, in most situations, is "one of these twenty approaches might work, because everyone is different." What is under my control is developing the toolkit to handle the situation. Here are a few approaches I've used with varying success:
- Unassuming simple questions: "What are some of the potential outcomes for this decision?"
- Redirect: "I see what you're saying, but there are also a lot of different ways to attack this problem. Let's brainstorm a few different ways we can go at this."
- Backup request: "Send me over the data you have after this meeting so I can combine it with what's already been submitted and distribute. We can finalize the decision on Wednesday."
- Direct feedback: "Good input. Thank you. We still need to make sure we cover all of our bases and have a sure footing if this is the direction we take. How can we further develop these specific points?"
- Buddying up: "What do we have so that we can convince others and defend this decision?"

In my personal experience, the most successful long-term executives are those who maintain a positive attitude and outlook with others, regardless of position and they have a solid understanding of the assumptions that they are making in the thousands of business decisions that they make throughout the year. However, when they were not in a position of direct power, I've seen executives with a solid history of success hit a brick wall attempting to collaborate with the "certain." Those that have succeeded demonstrated Herculean patience, which I know is an attribute that, because of necessity, I have worked to develop further.