5 Ways to Overcome the Paralysis of Uncertainty
January 23, 2025 | By David M. Wagner
Fight, flight, freeze, or appease?
In the face of an uncertain future, many organizations are choosing to freeze.
What about yours? Perhaps someone has suggested…
Delaying decisions until the funding environment becomes clear
Pausing an initiative until the policy environment stabilizes
Toning down messaging because of the current political climate
Delaying progress and appeasing perceived threats can have real consequences.
Miss opportunities. Lost momentum. Frustrated teams. Underserved clients.
Times of uncertainty are when we most need people and organizations to lead.
Here are five ways to do just that.
1. Be Decisive
Please don’t misread that as “choose what suits you with total disregard for what’s happening around you.”
There’s a difference between waffling between options and declaring, “we’re going to wait 3 months before making a choice.”
Waiting is a choice. Pressing ahead with the status quo is a choice. Changing course is a choice.
Do your best to weigh the risks, mission impact, and values alignment of your options, then make the best choice you can.
2. Communicate your Principles
What guided your decision? Let your stakeholders know.
The more you can share about your reasoning, the alternatives you considered, and what you deemed most important, the better.
Communicating this information spares your team the effort of guessing your intentions. It also is a good checkpoint for confirming that you’re being honest with yourself about your guiding principles.
3. Be Transparent about What you Know (and What you Don’t)
Where there is reasonable fear that success factors for your plan may change, openly state your assumptions.
E.g.: “The new administration’s policy includes language that may limit the work we can do. However, we don’t know how they’ll implement it or if it will hold up to challenges in court. This plan assumes we can continue as before.”
Obviously, stating your assumptions won’t make them true! But it will make it easier to have informed conversations about what to do if your assumptions don’t hold (see #4) and alert your stakeholders to specific risks to watch for.
4. Prepare Backup Plans
You cannot reasonably hope to predict the future. But you can plan for it.
Revisit your list of assumption (#3) and make your best guess about which is most likely to turn out to be wrong. If those assumptions do prove wrong, what will you do instead?
Identify the simplest ways to monitor your assumptions and to change course when required.
5. Stay Focused on What you can Control
Your biggest sources of uncertainty are outside your control.
Focus on what you can control: your responses to events, your choices, and your messaging to your team and supporters.
By clearly communicating your path, your guiding principles, your assumptions, and your backup plans, you will inspire confidence and trust – even amidst withering uncertainty. And if you need help sorting through the noise to decide on an effective course, meet with me to discuss how I can make the choice less daunting.