7 Vital Questions In Uncertain Times—And How To Answer Them

When panic subsides, opportunity resides.

Panic is a familiar—if unwelcome—emotion for many of us. It is also an unsustainable one. Like a state of excitement, it is too psychologically exhausting to maintain a sense of panic for long. What goes up must come down.

Great leaders intuit that panic is not a healthy foundation for decision-making. So they don’t participate in it. Instead, they make choices that are mindful of the medium to long-term impact on their organizations, or simply delay them for a calmer time. They remain grounded, knowing that what matters most is not what is happening now—but what happens next.

Unforeseen events have a habit of changing how we each relate to the world: our wants, needs, expectations, assumptions and frames of reference. In the light of a new dawn, people tend to seek different answers to the questions they have about their lives. In turn, this changes the demands they place on organizations—with corresponding impacts on markets, categories, competitive sets, products and services, and so on. And someone, something, somewhere, will emerge to satisfy that demand.

So, when panic subsides, opportunity resides. But how do you turn this to your advantage? What sort of questions should you be asking yourself and your team?

Here are seven that, in our practice, we have come to regard as non-negotiable when leading through change. If you can answer them well—which is to say, in a compelling, relevant and distinctive way—then you are all set for the road ahead. If you can’t, it’s time to stop panicking, and start planning.

At the heart of this question is “what does it for us mean to win?” Both the timeframe and the terminology are key.

Entrepreneurial leaders in particular are often good at defining the next week and the next decade—but not the intervening period. But, during times of upheaval, the art of strategy is to plan for the medium term. 6 months is an ideal window—not so short as to feel reactive, not so long as to feel abstract or to create the potential for (further) unanticipated disruption.

How to answer it: in terms of what denotes “victory”, it is worth noting that, psychologically-speaking, we tend to aim for the bars that we set for ourselves. This means that setting them high is advisable. If you set your bar at survival, you may achieve that bar but are unlikely to exceed it by any significant margin. But if set your bar at thriving—to outperform every expectation that you would normally set for your organization—you might find that it maximises your chances of both survival and growth. So: recalibrate your ambitions, and work out what “thriving” means for you.

No-one can predict the future, and anyone who claims to be able to do so is a charlatan (hey, futurists). But, in the face of change, it is possible to generate sensible hypotheses about how you expect the nature of customer demand to change. Because demand drives economies, this is essential for any medium to long-range planning work.

How to answer it: start by consulting the history books. For example, major social, political and economic shocks tend to presage an increase in collectivism—which has interesting implications for businesses that service a world in which the individual has often been sovereign. What might this mean for your organization?

It is worth paying attention to your own history as well—which is to say, your own career history and the history of your business. How have you observed customer need changing before—and responded to it? Remember that all things are cyclical; today’s trends will likely have shown up in some shape or form in the past.

Anything new must also be authentic.

“Why bother?” is an uncommon question in business—and among the most useful. It can bring clarity to almost any situation, from the small (“why bother with this meeting?”) to the existential (“why bother being in business at all?”).

In light of the hypothetical shifts in demand that you have predicted, why do you expect your customers to bother with your offering?

How to answer it: write down a one-line justification, and review it honestly with colleagues and peers (preferably those with no dog in the fight). If the answer wouldn’t inspire an averagely sentient member of your target audience to reach for their wallet right there and then, it might be time for a rethink. Many value propositions fall at the “value” hurdle.

What’s more, note that any new offering must be authentic—which is to say: true to your business and your brand in the eyes of its audience. If the customer wouldn’t expect you to do it, then your go-t0-market strategy will be fraught with risk.

Very few strategies are fully fit for purpose. A common reason for this is a lack of simplicity, which points to a lack of clarity in thinking and design.

How to answer it: get reductive. It might sound patronising to advocate explaining your strategy in words that a child can understand, but doing so will force clarity of communication. In turn, this will signpost where plans are woolly or flawed.

On a related note, avoiding business jargon is helpful for employee communication and motivation in general. Do you need to “optimize revenue flows via improved channel synergy,” for example, or just do a better job of selling to your audience, no matter when and where they shop? One of these statements is far more credible and emotionally engaging than the other (although a quick skim of many strategy presentations would indicate that we might disagree on which).

Leaders—particularly entrepreneurial ones—often have a sixth sense about consumer demand and how to take advantage of it.

But these good intentions often collapse in execution because the organization hasn’t built the competencies, structures or processes to be able to keep the promises it’s making. Almost overnight, the business stops being good at delivering its core product or service and instead becomes mediocre at delivering a new one—a surefire recipe for poor performance.

Times of change also have a habit of upsetting people and draining their energy. Understand: however good your ideas might be, a team of people that is tired or jaded because of recent or historic experience will lack the resources to deliver anything new. Good strategy pays attention to such human factors when appraising feasibility.

How to answer it: go back to basics. Competency frameworks and employee engagement surveys often provide plenty of insights about how stable your foundations are.

Success often relies on being able to anticipate failure. While crystal balls are once again in short supply, as you look to the near future it is possible to generate hypotheses about what might go wrong with your strategy. Perhaps you are exposed on a huge client relationship. Perhaps you have a track-record of burning cash on unsuccessful innovation. Perhaps your team aren’t able to cope with ambiguity, and end up falling into unnecessary conflict.

How to answer it: get ahead of the future. Perform a pre-mortem, and consider how the insights should influence your strategy.

Taoist philosophy suggests that nature has its own unique way of ensuring balance in all things—and that the art of successful living is not to resist occurrences, but instead to adapt to them like water, flowing effortlessly in keeping with the natural order.

Successful organizations behave like water—which is to say, they are almost endlessly adaptable. They don’t resist political, social, technological or economic change. Instead, they work with it, remaining open minded and flexible.

In your organization, the source of your adaptability might be cultural, structural or procedural—or (most likely) a combination of all of these elements. How are you building this capacity? What steps can you take over the next 6-12 months to foster it?

How to answer it: convene your senior team for an open discussion on organizational adaptability. (In 98% of firms, this will be the first time such a conversation has happened.) Map where you’re strong, and build from there.

These questions are not easy to answer well. But, in the face of significant change, it is essential to do so.

Start by getting your leadership team together to discuss them. Be on your guard for assumptions or groupthink. Push yourselves hard. Engage help where necessary.

Finally, when the going gets tough, remember that these seven questions—and the answers to them—are also building vital muscle memory. When the world changes again you will be better placed to handle it. And, looking back over the last twenty or so years, only one thing is for certain: constant change is the new normal.

Summer 2020 Semester Questions and Answers for Students

Because of the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, for the Summer 2020 semester (Summer 14-Week Session, Summer May Session, Summer 10-Week Session, Summer A Session (7-Week), and Summer B Session (7-Week)), students will again have the option of selecting a Pass/Fail grading method instead of the standard letter grade method, with certain exceptions. The letter grade method remains the default grading method if a student does not select the Pass/Fail grading option.

ChatGPT struggles to answer medical questions, new research finds

CNN  — 

ChatGPT might not be a cure-all for answers to medical questions, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Long Island University posed 39 medication-related queries to the free version of the artificial intelligence chatbot, all of which were real questions from the university’s College of Pharmacy drug information service. The software’s answers were then compared with responses written and reviewed by trained pharmacists.

The study found that ChatGPT provided accurate responses to only about 10 of the questions, or about a quarter of the total. For the other 29 prompts, the answers were incomplete or inaccurate, or they did not address the questions.

The findings were presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Health-Systems Pharmacists in Anaheim, California.

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s experimental AI chatbot, was released in November 2022 and became the fastest-growing consumer application in history, with nearly 100 million people registering within two months.

Given that popularity, the researchers’ interest was sparked by concern that their students, other pharmacists and ordinary consumers would turn to resources like ChatGPT to explore questions about their health and medication plans, said Sara Grossman, an associate professor of pharmacy practice at Long Island University and one of the study’s authors.

Those queries, they found, often yielded inaccurate – or even dangerous – responses.

In one question, for example, researchers asked ChatGPT whether the Covid-19 antiviral medication Paxlovid and the blood-pressure lowering medication verapamil would react with each other in the body. ChatGPT responded that taking the two medications together would yield no adverse effects.

In reality, people who take both medications might have a large drop in blood pressure, which can cause dizziness and fainting. For patients taking both, clinicians often create patient-specific plans, including lowering the dose of verapamil or cautioning the person to get up slowly from a sitting position, Grossman said.

ChatGPT’s guidance, she added, would have put people in harm’s way.

“Using ChatGPT to address this question would put a patient at risk for an unwanted and preventable drug interaction,” Grossman wrote in an email to CNN.

When the researchers asked the chatbot for scientific references to support each of its responses, they found that the software could provide them for only eight of the questions they asked. And in each case, they were surprised to find that ChatGPT was fabricating references.

At first glance, the citations looked legitimate: They were often formatted appropriately, provided URLs and were listed under legitimate scientific journals. But when the team attempted to find the referenced articles, they realized that ChatGPT had given them fictional citations.

In one case, the researchers asked ChatGPT how to convert spinal injection doses of the muscle spasm medication baclofen to corresponding oral doses. Grossman’s team could not find a scientifically established dose conversion ratio, but ChatGPT put forth a single conversion rate and cited two medical organizations’ guidance, she said.

However, neither organization provides any official guidance on the dose conversion rate. In fact, the conversion factor that ChatGPT suggested had never been scientifically established. The software also provided an example calculation for the dose conversion but with a critical mistake: It mixed up units when calculating the oral dose, throwing off the dose recommendation by a factor of 1,000.

If that guidance was followed by a health care professional, Grossman said, they might give a patient an oral baclofen dose 1,000 times lower than required, which could cause withdrawal symptoms like hallucinations and seizures.

“There were numerous errors and “problems’ with this response and ultimately, it could have a profound impact on patient care,” she wrote.

The Long Island University study is not the first to raise concerns about ChatGPT’s fictional citations. Previous research has also documented that, when asked medical questions, ChatGPT can create deceptive forgeries of scientific references, even listing the names of real authors with previous publications in scientific journals.

Grossman, who had worked little with the software before the study, was surprised by how confidently ChatGPT was able to synthesize information nearly instantaneously, answers that would take trained professionals hours to compile.

“The responses were phrased in a very professional and sophisticated manner, and it just seemed it can contribute to a sense of confidence in the accuracy of the tool,” she said. “A user, a consumer, or others that may not be able to discern can be swayed by the appearance of authority.”

A spokesperson for OpenAI, the organization that develops ChatGPT, said it advises users not to rely on responses as a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment.

The spokesperson pointed to ChatGPT’s usage policies, which indicate that “OpenAI’s models are not fine-tuned to provide medical information.” The policy also states that the models should never be used to provide “diagnostic or treatment services for serious medical conditions.”

Although Grossman was unsure of how many people use ChatGPT to address medication questions, she raised concerns that they could use the chatbot like they would search for medical advice on search engines like Google.

“People are always looking for instantaneous responses when they have this at their fingertips,” Grossman said. “I think that this is just another approach of using ‘Dr. Google’ and other seemingly easy methods of obtaining information.”

For online medical information, she recommended that consumers use governmental websites that provide reputable information, like the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus page.

Still, Grossman doesn’t believe that online answers can replace the advice of a health care professional.

“[Websites are] maybe one starting point, but they can take their providers out of the picture when looking for information about medications that are directly applicable to them,” she said. “But it may not be applicable to the patients themselves because of their personal case, and every patient is different. So the authority here should not be removed from the picture: the healthcare professional, the prescriber, the patient’s physicians.”