While Others Wait: Leveraging Uncertainty to Fix Work and Boost Performance

Smart leaders don't wait out economic uncertainty—they use the pause to fix work, boost team performance, and strengthen capabilities.

In sports, championship teams don't just excel during game time—they use the off-season strategically. While other teams rest, the best use this time to condition, refine skills, and prepare for what's ahead. The same principle applies to business leadership.

Today's economic and political climate has many organizations pressing the pause button on major initiatives. But what if this uncertainty isn't just something to wait it out — what if it's actually your greatest opportunity to strengthen your organization?

The Hidden Opportunity in Uncertainty

When markets become unpredictable, most companies default to a wait-and-see approach. Projects get put on hold. Decision-making slows to a crawl. Budgets are frozen.

But for forward-thinking leaders, this collective pause creates a rare window of opportunity. While your competitors are frozen in uncertainty, they use this time to fix what's broken, optimize what works, and position their team for exceptional performance when the market rebounds - or prepare themselves for making smart adjustments if it gets worse.

“Fortune favors the prepared mind.” Louis Pasteur

Understand what Is

The first step in leveraging this strategic pause is taking a critical look at your organization's current state. This isn't about maintaining the status quo—it's about honest assessment of the current work.

Your team members have invaluable insight into what's working and what isn't. They know where the bottlenecks are, which tools create more problems than they solve, and where opportunities for improvement exist. Involving them is critical.

Assemble a small working group. Take a comprehensive look at everything your team does and ask yourself: What adds value and what does not?

• What activities actually drive value for our customers and stakeholders?

• Which activities consume lots of resources but deliver minimal value?

• Where do we have best practices we could leverage?

• Where are our teams experiencing the most friction in their work?

Sometimes asking these questions reveals immediate opportunities: One financial services client I worked with discovered that 30% of their reporting processes were essentially "organizational habit"—outputs that few people used but everyone assumed were necessary. By eliminating these reports, they freed up nearly 10,000 hours annually without any negative impact.

But many times the opportunities you identify will require a bit of effort, a small project. Say for example you discovered that you could standardize some of the reporting, but you will need buy-in from your clients and build something that works for everybody. Working through these issues is a great way to engage your team in collaborative problem-solving rather than relying on top-down directives.

When leaders create space for teams to identify pain points and contribute solutions,

• Recommendations tend to be more practical and immediately applicable

• Implementation happens faster with less resistance

• Teams develop greater ownership of their work processes

• Solutions are more likely to stick long-term

• Employee engagement goes up

A pharmaceutical client used this collaborative approach to redesign their adverse event reporting process. By involving front-line teams, they not only improved compliance but reduced processing time by 50% — a significant achievement in a highly regulated environment.

Map the path to the next level

With a clear understanding of your current state and team-sourced improvement ideas, you can develop a practical roadmap for performance improvement. The key is creating a structured plan that:

• Focuses on a compelling aspiration that energizes your team

• Identifies quick wins to build momentum

• Maps capabilities that need development

• Sets realistic timelines that acknowledge constraints

• Balances immediate needs with longer-term transformation

• Utilizes the improvement work to develop your team

The roadmap isn't just about what to change—it's about how to sequence changes for maximum impact with minimum disruption.

Starting Small: Quick Wins That Build Momentum

Performance improvement doesn't have to mean massive organizational surgery. Often, the most powerful changes start small:

• Eliminating unnecessary approvals that slow decision-making

• Standardizing frequently used templates to reduce rework

• Creating clear decision rights to reduce meeting overload

• Simplifying reporting to focus on what matters most

These changes may seem modest individually, but collectively they can free up significant capacity. A consumer goods client found that implementing just three quick-win process improvements freed up 15% of their marketing team's time—capacity they redirected to strategic initiatives that had been repeatedly delayed due to "lack of bandwidth."

Using the Downtime to Get Your House in Order

Economic uncertainty creates a unique opportunity to work on getting ready for what comes next:

• Teams have more bandwidth as some projects are on hold

• Leadership has more appetite for productivity improvements

• The opportunity cost of change is lower when external activity slows

• Teams are often more receptive to change when the alternative is stagnation

Instead of just waiting for conditions to improve, use this time to prepare your organization to capitalize on opportunities when they arise. The organizations that emerge strongest from economic downturns are rarely those that simply cut deepest— is those that used the pause to become more effective, efficient, and engaged.

Isn't it time you turned uncertainty into your competitive advantage?

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Whether you're a new leader or seasoned executive, the current economic uncertainty offers a unique chance to strengthen your organization's foundation. Our Level Up framework provides a structured approach to help you and your team identify opportunities, build capabilities, and implement changes that make work more productive, valuable, and motivating. From lightweight guidance to comprehensive transformation support, we offer flexible solutions that meet you and your team where you are. To learn more how we can help your team reach the next level of performance, join us for one of our upcoming webinars.