Archive - May 2025

Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a major feature of complexity – and neither expertise, efficiency nor control alone will allow us to adequately engage with complexity. If an attempt at orderly, predictable efficiency is all that we bring to a situation that is in fact complex, we will find our adaptability, our flexibility, our resilience, and our capacity to manage the situation compromised. Dealing with uncertainty requires both a readiness to experiment at small scale, learn from the experiment and experiment again and seek human connection, relationship and the ability to work effectively with interdependency and interconnection. Key here is cross-functional collaboration and coalition-building. Margaret Heffernan calls attention to the invaluable role of trust and empathy (and I would add psychological safety) as human relationships develop, and to the value of the artist’s creativity. We may have something valuable to learn from people who are neuro-diverse. Useful guidelines for negotiating uncertainty might be to start by focusing on relationships and on small-scale experiments, and give up on the search for control and predictability.