Embracing Uncertainty

Admit it. How often have you been willing to say, “I don’t know,” to a roomful of colleagues? Giving voice to genuine uncertainty is simply not done in most corporate corridors, whether the issue is markets, projects, competition or almost anything else. Declarative sentences (“We will . . . ”) aggressively elbow out their conditional cousins (“Depending on what we learn, we might . . . ”). How many times have you heard or even said, “Any decision is better than no decision”?

Such stout resolution, designed to move an organization forward, has its points. But three new studies suggest that true leadership often lies in knowing how to embrace uncertainty. The research suggests that when companies fail to recognize the importance of uncertainty, employees disengage from the organization’s efforts. Leaders who get the best results combine an ability to set inspiring goals and a willingness to admit that they don’t know exactly how to accomplish those goals. It turns out that people working for managers who openly express uncertainty and who seek employee input in resolving ambiguous challenges are more satisfied with their jobs, more committed to and less cynical about their organizations, and more likely to identify with the companies they work for.

One study, completed in February 2001, surveyed 1,200 executives, managers and employees over several years to gauge how they manage uncertainty. The research measured job satisfaction and employee commitment in four archetypal situations:

Status quo situations. Employees and the organization avoid uncertainty. Employees want few surprises.

Unsettling situations. Employees understand that they are dealing in uncertainty, but may be overwhelmed by a chaotic workplace that has no direction.

Stifling situations. Employees embrace uncertainty, yet the organization acts as if it had great certainty.

Dynamic situations. Both employees and organizations embrace uncertainty. As a result, the climate is dynamic, energetic and constantly changing.

According to the study’s authors, the least satisfied employees were those in status quo environments and stifling environments. Surprisingly, employees in the former were not comforted by their organizations’ traditions. Even if they were not people who typically embrace change, they recognized the need for it in the company.

“The critical challenge for leaders is to create an environment in which employees feel that uncertainty is dealt with realistically,” says study co-author Phillip Clampitt. “But it’s not easy. The tension is to allow the organization to deal with uncertainty while also providing some degree of stability. This can be achieved in part through clarity of the executive’s vision.”

A March 2001 paper from Boston-based Bain & Co., “Achieving the Promise: Five Ways To Lead Mergers to Results” —which addresses in part the ambiguity that mergers generate — confirms that view. The Bain study also finds that successful transformational leaders provide the “what” but not the “how.” Although they are good at setting direction and framing the issues, perhaps the most important thing they do is unleash everyone else’s best efforts to figure out how to meet the challenges.

Change consultant Kate Lye, a partner at Smythe Dorward Lambert in Boston, says that leaders’ honesty is critical: “The whole concept of the all-knowing, omnipotent leader is over. Employees know this isn’t reality — and value a more candid dialogue. However, leaders need to be cognizant of their existing communication culture. . . . If leaders typically have not acknowledged challenges that are beyond their control, suddenly sharing this reality with employees can destabilize them.”

Given a concern about upsetting employees, skeptics might argue that rank-and-file workers are too risk-averse to deal with decision-making responsibilities. But a third study, completed in June 2001, suggests otherwise. That paper looks at the doer’s willingness to take risks and compares it with the evaluator’s perceptions about the doer’s attitude. The researchers took a simulation involving M.B.A. students and combined it with historical analyses involving a variety of decision makers — from Abraham Lincoln to the Manhattan Project’s workers. They discovered that evaluators (for example, managers) often underestimate the level of risk that others might take. Interestingly, it’s often the managers, not the workers, who lack enough understanding of the facts to take risks and make trade-offs.

Clearly, in a world where nothing is certain but change, the manager who will succeed in leading people through the confusion is the one who can first admit to not knowing everything and then tap the resources in everyone else. It will require a kind of vulnerability combined with confidence. For managers trained in another era, some soul searching may have to come first.

The February 2001 study, “Embracing Uncertainty: The Executive’s Challenge,” is by Phillip G. Clampitt, a professor of information sciences and communications at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; Robert J. DeKoch, chief operating officer at The Boldt Co. in Appleton, Wisconsin; and M. Lee Williams, professor of speech communication at Southwest Texas State University. The June 2001 working paper, “A Timidity Bias in Evaluations: Evaluators Judge Others To Be Too Risk Averse,” is the work of George Wu, associate professor of managerial and organizational behavior at the University of Chicago; Chip Heath, associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University; and Marc Knez, formerly an associate professor of strategy at the University of Chicago and now with the Chicago-based consulting group Lexecon.