Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

– Voltaire, French philosopher and author

But wait…! Can we get more data to be sure? Should we invest in more research?

But wait…! Have we anticipated all the risks? Have we checked with all our stakeholders?

But wait…! Do we know the impact to our other products?

I was a leadership advisor and coach to a global C-Suite team helping them to achieve their strategic priorities, including OKRs* (Objectives and Key Results), and successfully realize the business projections of a recently acquired company. The team needed to decide how to integrate the new product line into their existing markets and distribution channels. While it complemented their core portfolio, the product line and technology were unfamiliar to these leaders. The acquired company was smaller in size and had substantial potential for growth, but being less mature, it presented unique challenges that required strategic navigation.

The leadership team struggled to integrate their familiar rhythm of ‘how to run the business’ and couldn’t align on the best path forward for integration. When I met with them individually, each one expressed how they were frustrated and were eager to take action. Many told me that they believed in the team, they had a good track record of performance and collaboration.  Then, I asked each what they thought was getting in the way. Every leader gave me a different explanation. But I picked up on a common theme – information that “they needed†was always missing in order for the full team to be comfortable moving forward.

The senior leaders had all risen through the ranks in their respective areas of expertise within the corporation. They were used to their well-established products being the dominant brand in many markets. The newer technology was not an established solution and posed novel challenges.

They were eager to get going and knew they needed to take action, but they kept encountering new ‘unknowns,’ prompting them to gather more information and knowledge.

They were certain the problem wasn’t about the team (or so they thought).

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

– Erich Fromm, American psychoanalyst and social philosopher

Certainty holds us back

All of the “But wait…!” from above are valid and responsible concerns, however, more certainty often holds us back from action. We will never have perfect information – there are always too many unpredictable dynamics at play.

What I have found is that many great leaders love the intellectual challenge of solving complex problems. They are highly intelligent and accomplished. By navigating these problems, they activate their higher order thinking and creative problem-solving muscles. But too often, they get stuck in the intrigue of solving the problem and fail to move forward to make timely decisions to benefit the organization.

Leadership teams need to align on these questions:

• How do we understand when we have enough information?
• When is the right time to move forward knowing that we’re never going to have perfect knowledge?
• How can we get more comfortable with the uncomfortable and make the decisions that our organizations rely on us to make?

What might be perfect knowledge today, tomorrow’s reality can be altogether different. (Remember March 2020!)

Separate the ‘Need to Know’ from the ‘Nice to Know’

The leadership team kept wanting more information. They hadn’t established norms or signals to alert them that they failed to move forward. They kept “needing more information”. To the untrained ear or eye, the questions they were asking made sense. They didn’t realize that they were actually applying delay tactics because of their uncertainty regarding this new territory. Their need to seek more certainty was effectively masking their fear of not knowing. They allowed each other to get caught in a cycle.

During one of our team sessions, we separated out what they ‘needed to know’ from what they ‘wanted to know’. Suddenly, there was a nervous laughter from one end of the table, a gasp 3 seats down, a look of shock from a few at the other end of the table, and then the COO stood up and said what everyone was realizing, “We had our answers to, and were in agreement with, our ‘Need to Knows’ back four months ago. So, let’s get going!”

I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

– Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch Post-Impressionist painter

C-suite leaders need to continuously assess and adjust their priorities. They need to determine what is ‘need to know’ and what is ‘nice to know’. Intellectually, they understand that they won’t have all the answers, and that some answers can only be learned when they venture into the market. Emotionally, much is at stake and cerebral triggers are activated, which causes them to seek more certainty.

Uncertainty is a powerful force that can inhibit action and creative problem solving. How can leaders and senior teams reverse the inhibiting nature to embrace uncertainty to propel ideation and action?

When we are so close to things, we lose the objectivity to see our team dynamics in action.  Too often we default to patterns of the way it’s always been done. The benefit of seeking an outside perspective to observe behaviors and communication dynamics can improve senior team effectiveness. It frequently takes an advisor to hear and see things anew – to connect the dots differently.  Usually I have found that senior teams already have the key answers and know a path forward – they just weren’t able to realize they did.

It is an ongoing challenge to get on the other side of the complexities and ‘what ifs’ and identify the essence of what’s really important and what must be known versus what is nice to know.

The next big challenge this leadership team dealt with was how to help each other get out of their own ways to move toward bold action. The most important take away for this C-suite team was identifying how to recognize their counterproductive patterns in other situations. They learned what to listen for from each other and adopted new norms and behaviors for taking action. The team agreed on how to hold themselves accountable, individually and collectively, to prevent getting caught in a cycle of seeking certainty again.  Instead they focused more on the unique role they must perform as a C-Suite team.

If we wait until we’ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.

– Lee Iacocca, auto industry icon and business leader

Take a look at your top strategic priorities that are not progressing on pace. While seeking more certainty is not always the explanation, consider if it might be the case here.

Reflect on other situations when you and your leadership team took action before you had all the information. What did it take to make the bold leap to action? What needed to be so? What became newly discovered once you did act?

Beware of the ‘but wait…!’, just don’t wait.