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We often reward Certainty Theater (a not-so-distant relative to Success Theater).
I remember when a CTO asked me for a more detailed, solution-oriented roadmap. I resisted. He asked repeatedly. I finally caved and spent twenty minutes sketching out a dozen ideas based mostly on gut feel. âJohn really nailed this! He has a super clear vision. We need to start on this in Q2!â OoofâŠnot my best work. I was participating in Certainty Theater.
Why did I resist? Because I knew the opportunity was lucrativeâŠand that the company would deliver better outcomes if a cross-functional team of designers, developers, and customers started together (including further exploring the problem). If I committed to that big batch of prescriptive work before we started together, weâd miss out on all sorts of opportunities to make better decisions. Why did I cave? Well, he was a senior leader, and I also carved out âspaceâ to do what I wanted for a while.
He wasnât being malicious. The idea of holding off seemed like bad business. He wasnât comfortable with that level of uncertainty, and hadnât experienced the upside of starting together. To top things off, his team was under a lot of pressure to âdeliver predictablyâ and also had to juggle a lot of competing requests (which necessitated playing Tetris, which necessitated more rigid plans).
You notice this pattern of rewarding certainty all over organizations. âBring me solutions, not problems!â Annual budgeting and inflated plans to âget the headcountâ. The âsolid roadmapâ. The persuasive pitch. The startup thatâs âkilling itâ (but not). Delivering âpredictablyâ. New executives are asked to dream up a plan in 60 days and âexecuteâ. âGetting aheadâ of the work. 4 business days to plan the whole next quarter. Pitching a new product vision to aid in fundraising. The âcrystal clear missionâ.
Iâll always remember this bit of career advice given to me by a friend of the family (a person who had survived the nasty politics of an organization for 20Â years):
John, it is almost better to execute perfectly on a predetermined plan than to appear to waffle. If you do, and it doesnât work, youâll be known as someone who executes, but just ran into bad luck. Better to be naively decisive.
Is that true? Perhaps. Maybe that is the root of it. Often it is unintentionalâŠignoring the base rate, falling for confirmation bias, and a host of other gotchas. Consider that some high % of product development efforts fail to materially drive customer/biz outcomes. Do we start each kickoff with a reminder that âthereâs a 20% chance weâll make a big difference here!â
Take this example of two competing effortsâââone that represents a big opportunity (with 1â3x range), and could take 100â180 days, and one that is a âcertainâ 45â55d, and a more certain opportunity size.
Weâll often pick effort B because weâre lured in by that certainty. A is the better choice. Weâre not rational actors, and our organizations are not necessarily optimized for global outcomes/benefits.
The challenge is that in some contexts certainty is 100% warranted and expected. Itâs possible to find a precise answer and plan things to the T. Yes, your new laptop was provisioned and at your desk in under 24hrs. Yes, the event happened at the right place/time. Yes, we hit the quarterly sales goal. In these situations, someone who canât be certain, and deliver certainty, isnât doing a great job. But in many contexts that isnât the caseâââsoftware product development being one of them. At any given time, one company will be operating at many points along the spectrum, which puts a big burden on how things get communicated as thereâs no one-size-fits-all approach.
Leaders/managers frequently make the mistake of glossing over uncertainty because they are concerned that people will be demotivated. What they miss is that people DO crave certainty in some things (like keeping their job, that their work is making a difference, that theyâll get opportunities to learn/advance, and that theyâll get access to the right tools-of-the-trade), but that doesnât mean they crave certainty in all things. Take my example. The opportunity was, with a high degree of certainty, the right thing to focus on (inspiring and purpose-driven), but the precise interventions were unknown.
Communicating about uncertainty with certainty is learned thing. Iâve found that people respond to a crystal clear delineation between the known and unknown. They appreciate data when it is available but not âmade up stuffâ. They want to see that you tried and that thereâs some coherent rationale to the risk/bet youâre proposing. Perhaps above all, they want to know that youâre taking some of the burden for the uncertainty, and not just foisting it on them. Itâs about a coherent explanation. For product development teams that can be about crafting a bounded âgameâ / experiment that holds water, instead of just leaving things âopen endedâ. They want structure and rigor, not certainty (if that makes any sense).
Iâd extend that to pitching a startup. You can pitch your excitement for solving a compelling problem while conveying that it will likely take a couple tries to get to make progress.
Thatâs about it with this post. You get the idea. How do you foster productive discussions about uncertainty that 1) donât end up in analysis paralysis, and 2) donât end up making you appear âweakâ or âunpreparedâ?
Certainty Theater was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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