Chaos is a business drug that too many people are addicted too. I have had the pleasure of working alongside chaos junkies for much of my professional career, and as with any addiction it has some real impacts on those addicted and those around them.
Lets have a look at what a chaos junkie looks like, how we can spot them, and what we can do to help!
As with any drug, people always start out small, thinking they can stop whenever they want. We have a good plan, we have good ways of working, everyone is well paced and we are moving forward with purpose. But then someone will eventually pipe up “If we just do this one thing, this one time, we can get to the next what ever it is and we can stop and go back to how it was”. Biggest bull-twang you will ever hear in your life, that’s a junkie talking and we don’t take junkies seriously. Not because they are junkies, junkies need empathy too, but because we know its not them talking, its their addiction.
Chaos Junkies are hard to spot, you see they themselves rarely have this buzz of crazy energy around them, they are energetic but in what seems to be a positive way. No you spot a junkie by looking around them, junkies only feel comfortable when there is chaos around them, but they themselves hate being in a chaotic state. The problem is they cant feed off of themselves, like a vampire biting itself, doesn’t work out all that well. No Chaos junkies create chaos around them so they can feed off the energy created by others and hide, cosy and warm, in an envelope of disproportionate insanity.
The danger with chaos junkies is, they are rarely low level employees, no they are normally highly influential with the ability to change environments through fear or other means. Some people are born to be addicted to chaos, it’s the only way they know how to interact with the world around them, others find the drugs as they progress in their professional careers. But in many cases they feel lost in structures and they dislike a calm pace of progression because it exposes them for many times being ill equipped to dealing with their roles or responsibilities. This is why its actually easy to spot them, just look for the group or team that is running at an insane pace trying to figure out the impossible or deliver the impractical trapped in a series of never ending conversations on “what ifs” and “could have beens”. The poor souls trapped inside of a chaos bubble just expending energy trying to make someone’s wishes come true. The person who is in charge of, getting something from, or giving instruction to this team, that’s your junkie right there and they are hiding behind the chaos.
Now this is a problem for various reasons but the biggest one being what happens to your brain over time. With chaos comes an sense of survival so your brain activity shifts from being in a normal space to being in a survival space. Humans are incredible, immensely powerful creatures, we can sustain prolonged periods of pressure and strain because our minds are designed to deal with stress and survive. The key phrase here is “prolonged Periods of time” not a “permanent state of existence”, it’s not a sustainable mind space to live in, burn out anyone? This is the price we pay for being involved with junkies we burn out, we do damage to ourselves and others around us, and for what?
Getting back to our junkies, you see now why they don’t feed on themselves, because they would be the ones suffering mental fatigue and burnout, they would be the ones constantly threatened by their environments too scared to make a mistake or to take a risk, this is why they generate the chaos around them, it’s simple self preservation. The junkie must get their fix and they are milking others to do it. In many of my own experiences it has been a result of being places in a space where they are ill equipped to deal with the tasks and people at hand, they feel lost and alone and exposed and they have found that the cover of chaos creates many many talking points none of which comes close to exposing their lack of ability.
In well managed and maintained environments, where things make sense and the pace is sustainable, people have a tendency to have their brains in thriving mode. They accept challenges because it is safe and in many ways fun, they take risks because they have the time to think about the potential outcome. They are happy because they are in a sense not threatened by their environment but rather positively challenged by it. This environment is sustained through hard work and by being brave and asking why!
And here lies the biggest reason for identifying and dealing with a chaos junkie, they have the potential to break people, mentally crack them to the point where they are no longer capable of functioning, remember this is an addiction we are dealing with, very few things matter beyond the addiction certainly not someone else. Further to this in business environments junkies can stifle creativity, kill off innovation and turn functioning humans into order taking robots. I doubt I need to explain why these are important to modern businesses but take any large corporate today and you will find the same complaints about staff. “People are just not motivated”, “We need to innovate but there is nothing happening?!”, “Why is it that we are so busy but nothing ever gets done?”. We have all heard these types of tropes and now we know where they may come from, you have a junkie in your closet.
What do we do about chaos junkies? Resist! Resist for as long as possible, resits chaos at all times and this is done by being brave and always asking “why?”, Why is this Valuable?, Why do we need this?, Why Now? “Why” is an important and, when asked in a reasonable and respectful manner, is a powerful tool in combatting chaos. Chaos has no good reason, it seeks to destabilize and undermine established narratives and a simple “why?” can quickly highlight that. Now remember one thing junkies don’t like “Why?”. It questions their motives and directly threatens their fix, and any junkie that is cornered or questioned will lash out. This is why bravery is so important, you need to be brave in the face of a junkie itching for a fix, they can be belligerent, threatening and down right aggressive, but as long as you are respectful and genuine in your questioning there should be no reason not to find the truth.
Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death – Omar N. Bradley
Be brave in the face of chaos! In many environments, especially large corporates, it is so hard to remain brave and it is so easy to be side stepped or even removed. That’s right Chaos Junkies many times have the power to make your life miserable and this is something you should never forget, bravery comes with a price.
I have paid that price more than once, and the times I didn’t, the pain was real and the damage long term. I’m not going to spin you a line about it being easy to find another job if the one you are in isn’t right for you. That’s not always true and it’s not always possible. But what I can tell you is that you will regret the times you chose not to be brave for a long time after the event has passed.
Something from my past to show how this happens. Way back when I was in charge of a development environment and it was for the most part chaos free with a few minor incidents. In stark contrast the sales and enablement team was in a perpetual state of chaos driven from the top and failed by those in the middle to see those at the bottom suffer long hours of fruitless endeavour. Now how can these two environments exist next to each other with such stark contrasts? We resisted, in many painful conversations, fights and difficult situations we established a reputation for honesty and wanting to understand why something is important before we would even entertain it. It sounds like a harsh reputation to have but in the environment it was required.
I am not asking you to be a leader or a hero, I’m not asking you to be anything other than who you are. In my mind it is small acts of courage and bravery that lay the foundations for others to be brave as well. I challenge you to be brave in the face of chaos, create the space for others to be brave and when a group of brave people ask “Why?” in a respectful and reasonable manner it is much harder to ignore.
Mind, on the rocks?! 