Why is it so hard to admit there's uncertainty in our work?

Why is it so hard to admit there’s uncertainty in our work?

We make strategies, roadmaps, plans and budgets that stretch out for years into the future. We inevitably edit, adapt and abandon them along the way yet the push, up front, is for predictions, commitments and immovable targets. We spend weeks of our lives creating these plans and then base staffing, budgeting, prioritization and marketing decisions on them.

Uncertainty is uncomfortable

Humans desire certainty and predictability. We want to know where we’re going and how we’re getting there. We want to know what it will cost and if there will be a return on our investment. That makes sense. It’s also not realistic in a world of continuous change.

Not knowing is not only uncomfortable it can also be seen as a sign of incompetence. Didn’t I hire you to know how to do this? Isn’t that your job? These are terrifying questions to come from your boss if you admit that while you have strong opinions about where to point the team, you might be wrong.

Certainty is a fleeting perception

The bulk of our management approaches come from optimization of manufacturing. Certainty is the name of the game in industrial production. Most of us don’t work in that world. We’re building businesses on top of software. Software has become incredibly powerful not insignificantly by its ability to continuously improve. It feels, though, like no matter how much that technology improves to help us sense and respond more quickly we continue to run up against the consistently risky onslaught of prescriptive certainty.

We have lived experience. We have trained expertise. We’ve practiced our craft for years. We should know exactly how to solve the problems our customers and businesses face. The confidence in prescribing an exact plan is, however, based on what we know right now. And that works for right now. But 6 months from now? Or 12? Or 36? Does that current lived experience still matter? It probably does, but not nearly as much as it did when you first set out. The world moves forward faster than our lived experience and desire for predictability can keep pace.

Admitting we’re wrong is avoided and feared

The real reason behind not admitting that our work carries some level of uncertainty in it is because we’d have to admit we were wrong at some point. Admitting we’re wrong is seen as weakness at best and incompetence as worst in many organizations. When’s the last time someone, anyone, stood up in front of a team at work and said, “I don’t know how to solve this problem?”

Certainty gets rewarded – regardless of how right or wrong the prediction ends up being. And round and round we go, year after year, making annual budgets, strategies and plans that inevitably end up shifting only to make the same demands next “planning season.”

Embracing uncertainty builds more resilient organizations

Forcing unvalidated uncertainty on a team is demoralizing for teams who know there are better ways to plan. They know that building a bit of humility into our plans, clearly identifying risks to our prescribed plan and setting explicit triggers to revisit the plan increases the organization’s ability to sense and respond to changing market and world conditions.

These nuanced differences in planning ensure our teams are working towards the most important customer issues right now – even if we didn’t see them coming. They empower and provide the justification for the course correction and true organizational agility demands.

If you’re looking for a place to try a more “uncertain” approach, start with your mature partnerships. Your long-term clients and partners will take the risk with you. Be up front and clear and shorten your cycles. Check in regularly and adjust the plan based on what you’re learning along the way. Starting here, in a safe place, ensures that the cultural changes needed to more broadly embrace uncertainty – things like psychological safety for example – take root and grow over time.

Hi, I have a new book coming out in a few weeks on OKRs. It’s called Who does what by how much? and I wrote it with Josh Seiden. You can pre-order it now here. And you should. Thank you 🙂