#81: A recipe to deal with chaos with Carole Lamarque

Digitalization has been up and coming for a little while now. But still, changes and innovations in technology are made every day.This in combination with the inflation, the war in Ukraine and COVID leads to a ton of chaos and uncertainty. That’s why in today’s podcast, I have an amazing conversation with Carole Lamarque, the founder of Duval Union.

Who is Carole?

Carole has always been interested in crisis management and dealing with exponential growth. Remaining calm in the centre of a storm is what she has been doing for years on end. She says her passion for marketing defines her and she always seeks to go viral and create exponential growth. She also has written multiple books to inspire other leaders to deal with crises.

What’s the secret to leading in chaos?

Sooooo, how the hell are we supposed to satisfy our investors and bosses with so little information? How are we supposed to keep up and not burn ourselves out in the lightning-fast times? Carole gives us four great tips for this!

First of all, crises are here to stay. Our world is in a constant state of change and accepting this will make our lives so much easier. It is super important not to prepare for the previous crisis, but rather, we should understand what we can take from one crisis to another. We need to accept that we will never have all the information to make decisions.If a leader can accept that chaos is a normal part of the process, they can help their colleagues calm down and be in the right state of mind to make decisions and be innovative.

Secondly, creating the habit of making and changing plans on the go is one of the most important tips great crisis managers give.It’s not the ability to follow a plan that’s important, but rather having the agility to adapt to and overcome uncertain situations. You should manage unexpected situations through your agility habits, not because you had a certain plan in advance.

Thirdly, remember that you are never alone. You’re only one element in the solution to a problem. Share your knowledge with others and don’t underestimate their power to help you!

And last but not least, never stop learning!Everything around us is changing all the time, so keeping up is super important. It’s never too late to pick up classes or courses to learn about upcoming trends or read a good book about it.

How to properly get help from others

If you want to deal with chaos and uncertainty, you should never underestimate the help you can get from others, even if they have a different area of expertise. There are many ways of getting help from others and Carole gave me a couple of great tips. First of all, never underestimate the power of youth. What others sometimes see as naiveté, can often be a clever idea that can lead to great innovation. You also need a lot of energy in chaotic times and youngsters have plenty of that!

Another great way of getting help, is to have conversations with people who have a completely different area of expertise and analyze the process they follow in uncertain times. You can often draw things from these conversations that you can apply to your work as well!

I mentioned youngsters before, but that of course doesn’t mean you should discard advice from more experienced persons. They have dealt with crises many times before and you can learn a lot from them as well!

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I hope you have learned a lot from this podcast! If you enjoyed reading this, you really should listen to the entire podcast where we also discussed managing the expectations of bosses and shareholders who often want a lot of predictability, even though that is hard in these times! I will see you in the next episode!

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