The storm isn’t coming: It’s already here, and many leaders are realizing they’re sailing without instruments. The current business climate is a storm of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Strategic plans become outdated overnight. Decision-making feels like a risk. And yet standing still isn’t an option. Leaders are under pressure to keep moving while everything keeps shape-shifting.

You’re not alone. Research shows:
• Two-thirds of executives struggle to make decisions fast enough during volatile times.
• 70% of business transformations fail, often due to misalignment and unclear direction. And that was in the “old world.”
• Half of leaders admit to delaying decisions when markets become unstable.

Here’s the dilemma: When chaos hits, everyone is working hard—but without coordinated direction. The energy is real, the effort is sincere, but there are only limited results to show for it. Conventional business management practices are largely geared toward maintaining steady-state operations, planned projects, changes, or growth. Planning cycles are driven by calendar years, historical performance data, and negotiated delivery times. But today, you don’t have the level of control over your world for these tools to still facilitate progress. And to make it through this storm, leaders need more than motivation. They need navigation, because after this one, there will be another, and another.

That’s where the chaos compass comes in—a framework to help leaders regain grip, restore clarity, and move forward in alignment. Business, like sailing, has situations in which doing nothing when a situation arises is unthinkable, even disastrous. Taking the decision-making mechanics and people dynamics tools and practices from these worlds and translating them for use in a business context is the key to success in a volatile world.

The chaos compass does precisely that. Here are its eight elements.

1. Get your bearings

Start with situational awareness. Map out what you know and don’t know inside and outside your organization. Involve a wide variety of people to create trust, buy-in, and get perspectives from angles you don’t see yourself. Where are the bottlenecks, disconnects, gaps, and opportunities?

2. Identify your nearest safe haven

If the storm worsens, where do you go? Determine whether you can stabilize while operating, or if you need to carve out space to regroup. How long could you afford a holding pattern based on liquidity and current contracts if needed? Can you pause noncritical activity, create the bandwidth to work current priorities, and think?

3. Reclarify the destination

Is your original goal still valid? Has success been redefined? Do you need some near-term, interim, or short-term targets so your team has direction and urgency without false certainty? Redundancy in communication will help you iron out ambiguity and misalignment, and identify where your definition or boundaries need sharpening. Clarity directs energy.

4. Identify the big levers

Focus on two to four areas in which to invest time and resources to get you back on track toward success. Focus is key to success in turmoil. So, deprioritize distractions and noncritical tasks to free up capacity and reduce “noise” in the system. Make sure the interdependencies between these efforts are identified and resourced.

5. Deploy decision-making mechanics

Good, fast decision making is facilitated by implementing decision-making frameworks that are simple, fit for purpose, and hence not complex to implement. You need clarity on the who, what, how, and why now that the structure will provide to ensure that the effort and energy can go into making the best possible decision based on data and risks.

6. Empower people

Time to empower your people to “get on with it.” With clarity on destination, priorities to work, and the mechanics and boundaries in place, redirecting effort becomes autonomous. Strive to delegate down to the lowest practical level for expediency. Remember that task assignments might need to deviate from the organizational chart as it was.

7. Reliable tools and data

Ensure your people, partners, and leadership can access the right resources to do their work. More isn’t better. Performance data, decision logs, communication plans—ensure your tools are relevant and responsive in real time.

8. Execute and adapt

Don’t bow out before the finish line. Execute plans until the intended outcomes have been achieved, but reassess your environment regularly. If the winds change, your course should, too. Agility isn’t random; it’s responsive. The need to course-correct isn’t a sign of failure but rather business resilience in its pursuit of progress.

To be successful in the current climate, there’s no sense in waiting for clarity or the storm to pass. You can’t afford to wait while the next storm is already forming. You don’t need calmer weather to lead; you need rhythm, direction, and the willingness to move while things are still swirling. With the right navigation system, businesses can make smarter and faster decisions under pressure, align teams behind shared goals, and start building resilience—not just surviving chaos, but strengthening through it.