How a Car Navigator can Teach us How to Handle the Unexpected
Things go wrong. Your plan might be brilliant, well resourced and deftly executed, but there will always be obstacles in your path. Learning how to deal effectively with these unexpected difficulties is an essential leadership skill, and also an effective way to stay calm in a crisis.
Back when car navigators were expensive novelties, I had to produce a short video explaining how they worked. To get shots of the navigator in action we drove around the streets of Milan with a representative of the navigator vendor driving the car, a camera operator in the back seat, and me sitting beside the driver, keeping very quiet to not disturb the audio.
“Turn left”, the navigator would say, and we would turn left. “Turn right”, it said, and the driver turned right. “Go straight ahead”, it said. We went straight ahead.
When the camera operator had all the shots that he needed I suddenly had a thought. “What happens if we disobey the instructions?” The driver didn’t know. Apparently, they hadn’t thought of that. So, we tried it. At the next junction, when the navigator said “turn left” we continued straight ahead.
At first there was just a silent pause. Then the navigator continued calmly “Turn left…” Evidently it had recalculated the route from the new unexpected position and simply told us how to continue. Everyone was surprised. I realized that we are so used to the typical human response that this seemed unusual, but on reflection I understood that the machine was right.
When we disobeyed the voice of the navigator, we all tensed up, expecting it to get angry and make unhelpful comments like “Who taught you to drive?”, just like many people do. But it didn’t even mention that the driver didn’t follow instructions. It just thought “We want to get to X, and now we are at Y, so which is the best route for that?” Snarkiness might be satisfying, but it doesn’t get you to where you want to go.
Since then, I have always tried to follow the same approach when I have to deal with unexpected issues myself. Instead of getting angry I ask myself what the navigator would do. And every time this is just to assess the new situation and then find the best way to move forward. This means that when there is a problem you have to focus on the issues and not the people; you have to focus on solutions and not blame. It doesn’t help to yell at people. It doesn’t help to ask things like “what were you thinking of?”. It doesn’t help to try to deflect blame. You have to focus on the goal and finding a path toward that goal. Maybe it is not the path you initially planned, but there are always other ways.
In a way it is humbling that we can be taught leadership lessons by a car navigator with a brain the size of a cornflake crumb. But It’s a method that helps you focus on the result, keep good relationships with the people around you and stay calm in the stormiest days.
