Recommended Reading

Navigating Chaos, How To Find Certainty In Uncertain Situations

Kicking off the year with a blinder of a book by former Navy Seal turned executive leadership coach Jeff Boss, I read Navigating Chaos: How to Find Certainty in Uncertain Situations. And with the new year racing ahead, this is a fitting book to accompany my plans for adapting actions to my vision of growing Barenaturals as a global brand.

First off I want to note the challenge faced by many authors coming from military backgrounds, the potential for stereotypical assumptions, e.g. that this will be another glorified gun-toting hooyah. Rest assured this book does not fit this stereotype.For those of us in possession of a good brain, it will come as no surprise that knowledge from secret operations (ok, yes there was guns!) can transfer over to entrepreneurship beautifully. Especially for leadership, problem solving and more surprisingly relationship skills. Swap the operator for entrepreneur, swap a top secret target for a business goal, swap the special ops team for your own team and the similarities are glaring.

Throughout the book the author seamlessly blurs previously held lines that separated knowledge between business and military thinking. Adeptly articulating how to use the tactical advantages of lessons learned, that brought about success on the battlefield; and how this translates across to achieve success in business and relationships.

In both these areas, the random play of chaos eventually occurs. Some may know this as a humorous law of nature, fondly known as ‘Murphy’s law’ to the effect that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And human as we are, we can’t control uncertainty. However, this book demonstrates that we can navigate toward certainty; by identifying our values, what we are doing, the why behind our actions and understanding our purpose and direction.

One of the ways identified is self talk, the things that you say to yourself, especially when faced with problems or obstacles. After developing these skills of self awareness, Jeff describes how to flip your negatives into positives to control and change outcomes.

You come away from this book with knowledge that there are many comparables between deploying on mission and pursuing business goals. How by making relationships stronger, sharing information, developing focus, impulse control, through trust and teamwork collaboration, better decision making; all are key factors in the end state, navigating to certainty.

This isn’t a step by step manual, it is a book where we see through the unique window of anothers experiences and learn some elements of what made him effective in his missions, his team and in achieving his personal goals. If you take and adopt his advice, it will give you insights on how to be most effective, become a better leader and achieve things that your heart beats faster for.

Insights such as the importance of sharing knowledge, having a plan and creating an environment where everybody knows what success looks like. Insights of passion and conviction to relentlessly chase down the win and reach certainty. By taking to heart the advice contained in this book, we are shown the possibilities of adapting unexpected chaos into exciting life enhancing potentiality.

This book shares Jeff’s real life experiences and stories to divulge elite level training. Giving you tools to achieve the result you desire; adapt to overcome challenge, focus on the important and as the title suggests, how to navigate the chaos present in your life.

It was one of the best books I have come across in the leadership section (and I read so many books). I am one of those people who walk through the subway, get on the tube and never look up from my kindle and this book made the chore of travelling back and forth to London a pleasure.

By the end of the year I will have completed my list of top reads throughout the year, and this will definitely be on it. I don’t hesitate in recommending this as a read for anyone who pursues the value of constant and never ending improvement.

Navigating Chaos is available on Kindle or Hardcover