The certainty of uncertainty
Is uncertainty growing, and do we need to get better at managing it? Or is it certainty that we’re most afraid of facing up to?
There’s a lot of talk about managing uncertainty.
Supposedly there’s more of it to manage. But is that true?
Looking at it from the world of business — because this comes up most often when we’re talking about new models for organisations and leadership — was the world ever certain?
Well, yes, our traditional structures were at least designed to create a sense of predictability.
Predictable demand, predictable ability to supply, predictable growth.
In the early days of consumerism, of course demand outstripped supply — as there hadn’t been any supply to create the demand (and vice versa). And in parallel, the working population suddenly had money to spend.
So there probably was a period where life inside many organisations felt pretty predictable.
But nothing was ever certain.
These models of business just had extremely limited means to gather feedback from the outside world.
The pace at which they could pick up new information, process it and respond was incredibly slow.
So it was very easy to believe, from within the safety of the organisation, the world was a fairly certain place.
But as we developed faster, more public and easy-to-use communication technologies, and the world became better connected, we began to find ourselves bewildered by information.
In the middle of our bewilderment, we started trying to react more quickly (or feeling that we should), and our sense of a pace of change became equally overwhelming.
All this happening in the confines of rigid, closed, silo-based structures that were designed for predictability.
What we felt we needed to be able to do, and what was actually within our control and influence were suddenly miles apart.
And when this happens, human beings tend to stop functioning properly.
When we feel responsible for something that’s outside of our control, we experience stress. When we get stressed, our brains are flooded with cortisol and other stress hormones.
The Sympathetic Nervous System in our brain is activated and we go into fight or flight mode. We see everything as threat, we’re unable to think creatively, we get mental tunnel vision.
And over time, it starts to damage our physical and mental health.
In large organisations that are designed to create stability and certainty, but filled with people that are experiencing just the opposite, this is fundamentally destabilising, and has the same long term effect.
But the irony is that nothing in business was ever certain, anyway.
Nature means business.
Businesses aren’t simply a set of systems and processes, and they don’t operate in a vacuum.
They are filled full of these very complicated, emotional beings, and are inextricably linked to a complex, global ecosystem that includes wider society and the natural environment.
And you can’t simply create your own desired version of reality, in the face of the these things, in defiance of nature itself.
Nature has it’s own cycle of ups and downs, growth and decay, expansion and contraction, and to a human being this can feel incredibly uncertain.
And this is not very palatable to a species that has developed an obsession with trying to create certainty, order, structure, predictability.
We put a lot of effort into engineering our environment or systems so that we’re more likely to get certain results, but the total chaos of the world around us, the trillions of interactions and potential outcomes, the irrationality of human emotion and action, mean that anything could happen in any given moment.
So we’ve only ever been creating an idea of certainty, of predictability, of structure. And when that idea is tested, or fails completely, as seems to be happening increasingly, we become stressed or overwhelmed.
So this makes uncertainty the most certain thing.
In fact, it’s the only thing that we can be sure of. That the world is, and always will be, a deeply uncertain place.
And while we’re not OK with this, all we’re ever doing is hiding from that in escapable fact by creating structures and systems and processes to quell the anxiety inside of us.
It’s a funny thing to think about really — that all these things that we’ve created, from the global financial system to nation states and major business institutions, in some part (not all) an attempt to stop us feeling anxious at the idea that our world is uncertain.
Hold on a minute. How can this be true?
Is the world really such an uncertain place?
If uncertainty is the only thing that’s truly certain, then theoretically, there’s nothing but certainty.
Again, let’s use nature as a lens to understand this
Plants, animals, humans, right down to their atomic structure, are engineered to do the only thing they can do. Grow, consume, reproduce, decay…
Seeds have every bit of information about exactly the kind of plant, or tree they will grow into. The coding for a 40 foot tree, already there, in its entirety, in a tiny seed.
And research increasingly shows that human beings are similar. While we agonise over the decisions we’re faced with, our brains already know exactly how we’ll make every decision we will face in our lifetime. It’s in our DNA, our programming, our conditioning — the pre-verbal beliefs we develop before we’re four years-old.
And what could be more certain that the fundamental truths that we’re born with?
So maybe that’s what we’re so terrified of — that we struggle to come to terms with?
This is the thinking in the field of existential therapy. That any difficulties a human being faces can be linked to one of four dimensions of human existence: The inevitability of death, that we are totally free (and therefore totally responsible), we are ultimately isolated (and cannot depend on others for validation), and life has no inherent meaning.
So maybe there is no uncertainty to come to terms with, or to manage, but instead we choose to imagine uncertainty, rather than accept the fundamental certainties of being alive in the world.
And in our frantic attempt to avoid the fact we’re alone in a meaningless world, with total responsibility for everything we think, feel and do, we try to impose structure, order and control over the world around us.
Woah there. How did we get from business and closed feedback loops to death and the human condition?
Fundamentally, because everything that was ever created in the world, by a human being (or group of), is somehow an expression of their personal needs, hang-ups, frustrations and biases.
Every idea, project, business, product, can only come from inside of a human being, to then be manifested outside. And the inside of human beings do not have a nice, hermetically sealed ‘rational thinking’ department, and a ‘Do not look in here — messy shit for outside of work’ department. It’s all just a wonderfully messy party.
Whether we like it or not. Shell, Monsanto, Greenpeace, the Nutribullet, LIBOR. Somewhere in the there is a little piece of a human being and their inner world. Including their deepest existential fears.
Time to make some sense
OK, let’s try and give this at least a shot at being a little bit practical.
In rethinking how we do business, we need to get better at noticing when our conscious efforts are being driven by subconscious fears and anxieties.
Some of the biggest dysfunctions in the world of work come from an incessant attempt to stem our inner wobbles.
It might be too late to redesign the major financial institutions or democratic systems in a more conscious, considered way, and it’s comforting to believe that as they fall apart, what’s starting spring up is more responsive, agile, and human initiatives.
But for most of us what matters most is what we can control and influence, in front of us, on a daily basis.
Looking at how this might translate for you:
As a manager of a team, you might feel anxious that the the best members of your team will leave. The irony is, that the harder you try and make them stay, the more likely they are to go. They’ll sense your anxiety, wonder what’s wrong and feel increasingly uneasy.
But if you can totally accept that they will leave, and let go of that anxiety, you’ll be able to just focus on making their time with you the best learning experience they’ve ever had, and you’ll attract the best people in the market.
As a high-performing team member, you might be feeling anxious about the lack of feedback or appreciation you get in your work, whether you’re doing a good job, and whether your future is secure. But the harder you strive for validation and approval, the more desperate you’ll seem and the more likely you’ll receive empty platitudes, which will only serve to bolster your fear.
If you can totally accept that no one other than you can provide the validation you’re looking for, people will happily provide you with the feedback you need to learn and improve, and there’s a far greater chance you’ll have a fulfilling career, in this organisation or beyond.
As the founder of a business, you might be feeling terrified that your business is going to go south. So you put that nervous energy into coming up with the smartest, most compelling new business model or turnaround strategy that you can. But a plan designed to stem your fear, rather than succeed, is never going to motivate and inspire anyone.
If you can totally accept that the business might have to shrink to virtually nothing, and eventually it may die leaving you penniless (because this is always going to be a possibility, however unpalatable or scary it is) you can focus your energy on creating something you love, that other people will love, that ultimately has far more chance of succeeding and sustaining itself in the long term.
Sounding easy? Hell, no.
Do I have this sorted? Course not.
But awareness is the thing that provides choice. And slowing down to sense where our motivations are really coming from, instead of reacting, gives us the opportunity to start rooting out and facing up to these limiting, existential anxieties.
There you go. From organisational dysfunction to existential angst and back again.
What do you think? Is uncertainty totally certain? Is that a major cause of organisational dysfunction? Or not? Where does the human condition and its dysfunction — specifically fear of the inevitable — show up in our work lives? Does it ever play a positive, constructive role…?
