Following the last blog post on chaos, a quote by Dev Patnaik, cofounder and CEO of strategy firm Jump Associates in this article really struck a chord:

 

“There’s a difference between the kind of problems that companies, institutions, and governments are able to solve and the ones that they need to solve, Patnaik continues. “Most big organizations are good at solving clear but complicated problems. They’re absolutely horrible at solving ambiguous problems – when you don’t know what you don’t know. Faced with ambiguity, their gears grind to a halt.”

 

“Uncertainty is when you’ve defined the variable but don’t know its value. Like when you roll a die and you don’t know if it will be a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. But ambiguity is when you’re not even sure what the variables are. You don’t know how many dice are even being rolled or how many sides they have or which dice actually count for anything.”

Businesses that focus on uncertainty, says Patnaik, “actually delude themselves into thinking that they have a handle on things. Ah, ambiguity; it can be such a bitch.”

 

To us this is a really powerful concept. How often do we lull ourselves into a false sense of security, with plans, risk registers and even insurance, when the real threats are the ones we can never plan for. Learning to live with ambiguity and with uncertainty is definitely a life skill for anyone running their own business, but what are the things we can do which protect us against the unknown?

We have some ideas, and we’ll blog more about those over the next week, but in the meantime, let us know what you think….