Alchemize Uncertainty: Grow an Organizational Culture of Possibility
In recent years, I’ve been asked by the leadership of various innovation hubs and individual leaders I work with to help shift the relationship they and their people have with uncertainty.
We have had great great fun and success in creating workshops and programming to shift relationships with uncertainty not just from negative to positive, but to empower people to harness uncertainty as an active collaborator.
Given we work in a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) world, how people relate to “uncertainty” is critical to their ability to be prolific innovators and creators.
With so many at this time relating to uncertainty as something to be feared and avoided, and thereby unconsciously making their life and work smaller in creativity and impact, I thought it may be of value to share some key tenets and interventions should others sense value for themselves and their people at this time in our world. If we can together scale a more prolific, creative, and empowered relationship with uncertainty in the world, imagine the new worlds we might create.
Key understanding: Uncertainty is only threatening to us if we are attached to a way reality should play out or behave. As we feel safer in detaching from that way of thinking, uncertainty becomes a field of limitless possibility we can create anything from.
What follows are some key tenets I have used in my organizational and individual work:
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WHAT ARE IDEAL OUTCOMES?
Evolve the relationship people have with uncertainty to actually be generative of creativity and innovation. From a relationship of concern, worry, and dread, to one of curiosity, delight, and greater possibility. From a relationship where uncertainty is a threat one’s preferences, to one where we embrace that uncertainty can birth far greater outcomes for us than our current preferences.
WHAT IS THE THESIS OF CHANGE?
“Change starts with us. An understanding of how the brain works, raising from non-conscious to conscious the drivers of our behavior that may be barriers to success; priming the brain to notice and grasp opportunities that may otherwise have passed us by; turning “lack” thinking into abundance; and manifesting the real-world outcomes that we desire for ourselves and future generations.”
– Tara Swart, Neuroscientist, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Uncertainty moves from a negative to a positive experience and a prolific relationship for us when we can hold these understandings:
- Circumstances can impact preferences, but not our purpose or impact. While our exact preferences for what happens may or may not come into fruition and can be “thwarted” by new circumstances, our personal purpose and intended impact is not stoppable or deterrable. While the various forms our purpose may take can come and go and are an unpredictable dance with uncertainty, purpose does not– it is the consistent intention, mission, and force behind whatever we choose to keep creating.
- When there is uncertainty, something even greater can emerge. Something even more spectacular than even our preference can come into being when being birthed from a field of infinite possibility — uncertainty.
- Curiosity alchemizes uncertainty into possibility. Curiosity is always the way out of a negative relationship with the unknown and uncertainty– it instantly transports us to a field of new possibility. Inquiry that directs curiosity toward uncertainty will convert it into a host of new ways forward.
- Uncertainty is not a sign we are lost, it is a sign that we are on track. We are on track when we are creating the new yet unseen thing that we came to create, instead of that which has already been created, done, and predictable. If we are not pushing up against uncertainty, we are off track in terms of being innovators. We are on track when we are the ones creating the track into the field of uncertainty, instead of following the known/certain track already created.
- Uncertainty is Limitless Possibility. Innovation is by its very nature an agent that pulls possibility from uncertainty. For innovation to exist, there needs to be uncertainty. Uncertainty is our friend because anything is still possible inside of it. Uncertainty is actually Limitless Possibility.
WHAT IS THE MECHANISM OF CHANGE?
Experiential knowing.
A new, positive, and prolific relationship with uncertainty will not be attained by simply supplying people on an informational level. To create true knowing and thereby a transformational change in consciousness, people, and culture, there is only one way:
We must have a personal experience of a new truth as it is applied to the actual and present challenges and issues of our real day-to-day work and lives.
This is the difference between knowledge and knowing — between reading about swimming and jumping in the water and swimming.
SELF-APPLICATION IS WHAT GIVES US A FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE
Identify one’s current relationship with uncertainty.
If we wish to evolve our relationship with anything, we need to first identify and acknowledge where that relationship is currently. As a metaphor, if we are crossing a river, and hopping from rock to rock, we need to look down and know which rock we are on, so we can then know the direction to the next one. It’s normal to experience worry, anxiety, and fear. Including in our relationship with uncertainty. It’s just that if we want to evolve from that, we need to know where we are, so we can know the direction forward.
Distinguish between our preferences and our inner purpose.
One of the reasons uncertainty can seem so scary and threatening is because we have these things called “preferences”. To give us a sense of control, the ego-mind likes to imagine how the future should play out given what one may want to accomplish or create. Yet what we are looking at every day is this thing called the future/unknown/uncertainty which is an infinite field of potentials– and so what are the chances that our exact preference is what happens? This becomes a scary thing to the part of us attached to our preference. But the greater truth that can return us to ease is that there is a difference between a preference and deeper purpose, calling, intention. Preferences are form — the transient forms our purpose might take in the world. But purpose itself exists intact beyond form and physical world circumstances. Purpose can, and will, find an infinite number of ways to come into the world as long as we are not attached to a certain way — preference. When our preference doesn’t exactly happen, we can return to our deeper purpose or intention, and explore new possibilities for bringing it into the world. And always find them.
Curiosity Hack 1: From happening-TO-me, to happening-FOR-me
This is about moving from victim to victor regardless of what happens in life and work. We can move from a victim of circumstance to a victor over circumstance when we are willing to explore life not as happening TO us, but as happening FOR us. When we do that, our consciousness naturally moves from protection to curiosity. The state of curiosity can take what seem the worst circumstances and generate new possibilities forward that we can create from. As a result, this mechanism– from TO to FOR me, from fear to curiosity– can transform “what is” into exciting futures for us.
Curiosity Hack 2: See challenges as opportunities
The moment we reframe challenges as opportunities, we move into an elevated level of consciousness. The level of consciousness where things like innovation, creativity, and new possibilities are its functions. To be able to see “what is” and “what can be” from a level above the seeming maze– from a level where many new and even more exciting routes become visible.
See uncertainty as a field of limitless possibility.
The issue many of us have with uncertainty is not actually uncertainty itself. It’s more to do with how we choose to relate to uncertainty. While uncertainty and the unknown are one of the few absolute givens of reality, the ego-mind chooses to make these “wrong”: “We shouldn’t have uncertainty. Uncertainty means we are doing something wrong. If we were doing this whole life thing “right” we’d have no uncertainty and everything would happen just as we’ve intended it. Uncertainty means we are off track–we are lost and need to get back.” But if we are truly on the path of innovation–of blazing new possibilities and new futures– that is, creating NEW paths where there are none yet– how can we avoid standing on the edge of what is certain and what is not? Doesn’t the lack of a path mean we are actually right where we should be? Isn’t the path now ours to make? And doesn’t uncertainty always give us infinite possibilities on where we can take our path?
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I hope this can be in service to leaders and organizational cultures seeking to thrive without a dependency on the ideal cooperation of outer circumstances.
Put to practice, you may find that while it is still VUCA and sometimes stormy out there in the world, inside it is always sunny, exciting, and blossoming with new ideas and possibilities that go well beyond our transient preferences.
And if that kind of possibility is available to us, right now, wouldn’t we want to spend more time there?
