Spark 12 – How to think more strategically: Embracing Ambiguity: Example

Today, we’ll look at the muscles you need to embrace ambiguity, and how to leverage it in your own organisation.

To effectively blend psychological development with practical steps in embracing ambiguity for strategic thinking, incorporate the following steps:

1. Self-reflection: Begin by understanding your own and your team’s psychological responses to ambiguity.
2. Scenario flexibility: Develop thinking around multiple scenarios, such as funding or policy changes, ensuring that each scenario has varying degrees of certainty (I call these ‘crystal’ through to ‘fuzzy clear’).
3. Build the muscle: Focus on enhancing cognitive flexibility and emotional intelligence (see tools below).
4. Pause: The power of a pause! Learn to sit with ambiguity. Don’t try to solve or conclude the process. Let it hang there for a while.
5. Figure out how you will choose between options: Develop the criteria or scorecard you will use to help you navigate towards a choice.
6. Practise the nested ‘if’: You may end up with ideas that are not just A or B, but rather if A, then C. Embrace this as it is one of the pillars to strategic flexibility.

How to think more strategically: methods

If you want to hone your aptitude in the realm of embracing ambiguity through methods rather than gadgets, consider these progressive techniques:

• Red teaming: Think of this as an intellectual ‘war game’. In red teaming, a separate group challenges the assumptions and plans of the main strategic team. It’s an excellent method to consider multiple angles and address uncertainties head-on.

• Double-loop learning: Traditional single-loop learning asks, ‘Are we doing things right?’ Double-loop learning also asks, ‘Are we doing the right things?’ This self-reflective approach enables you to question underlying assumptions and paradigms, embracing ambiguity in your strategic objectives.

• OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act): Originally developed for military strategy, the OODA Loop is a cycle that emphasises rapid decision-making in ambiguous situations. The continuous loop facilitates agile strategy, allowing you to adapt to changing conditions swiftly.

• Pre-mortem analysis: Before fully implementing a strategy, conduct a hypothetical post-mortem to identify what could go wrong. This anticipatory method forces you to consider uncertainties and adapt your strategy to mitigate them.

• Delphi Method: Assemble a panel of experts and conduct multiple rounds of questioning on a strategic topic, refining the questions based on previous answers. This iterative method leverages collective intelligence to address ambiguous challenges.

• Johari Window: Employ the Johari Window to improve self-awareness and team dynamics. Developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, it’s a simple but powerful tool for self-awareness and building trust. There are many resources online to show you how to use this tool.

Each of these methods requires a different mindset and skill set. Some will push you into the domain of uncomfortable unknowns, and others will invite you to engage in a degree of meta thinking about your strategies. But they all serve the same purpose: to arm you with the flexibility and foresight needed when charting paths through ambiguous terrains.