Understanding and Managing Ambiguity at Work

Over the past few years, businesses have been heavily scrutinized when a catastrophic disaster or event occurs. Journalists probe deeply into the events and uncover the early warning signs of disasters and questions leaderships’ abilities.

This often paints a picture that the disaster was avoidable. As a result, more and more companies are held to a high level of accountability for preventing such catastrophes. With that, companies need to ensure that their leaders and teams are equipped to identify and manage the early warning signs of potential disaster. These early warning signs are better known as ambiguous threats.

What is an ambiguous threat

Ambiguity is defined as the lack or absence of clarity. One way that ambiguity arises in business is lack of clear communication from leadership. Employees are left to interpret and or create their own direction, usually causing frustration.

Another way ambiguity arises is from events that change the workplace, competitive landscape, or overall market. These events can be innocuous or, in the case of a pandemic, can be very overt. The subtle and innocuous events are known as ambiguous threats. It is an event that can cause an organization harm, and where the extent of the harm is unclear.

Examples of ambiguous threats in business

There are many examples where an ambiguous threat has caused irreversible or even catastrophic damage to an organization.

Film company Kodak did not see the early warning signs of the decline in film use. It struggled to gain the skills to reinvent itself as a company, despite having the initial lead in the digital photo segment. This ultimately led to the company’s demise; Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

Other times, the inability for leaders to recognize a threat has led to catastrophic damage. Take the early warning signs that the Bush Administration received about Al Qaeda’s potential attacks. Dismissal of this information contributed to the lack of preventative respond to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

Developing leadership for managing ambiguity and responding to ambiguous threats

According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the ability to create clarity is one of the most sought after traits of a leader. This is because in times of ambiguity, employees look to leaders for clarity as a sign of confidence. Equipping rising stars with the skills to deal with ambiguity ensures that the company’s future leaders can navigate through crisis.

One way for future successors to develop these skills is to have them take on them smaller, unstructured projects, such as breaking into a new market or creating a new business model. This will force managers to use their creativity and resourcefulness in order to succeed in place of providing them with a playbook. Managers will have an opportunity to exercise and develop their creative problem-solving skills.

How to deal with ambiguous threats

Companies can also engage in activities that help their team build the skills to identify, manage, and neutralize an ambiguous threat. The process includes three key steps:

  1. Have teams practice working under pressure – while it is impossible for companies to develop a disaster response plan for every potential scenario, what they can do is have their teams practice responding to catastrophes. This will help the team build the skills for working under pressure. Schedule rehearsals for different scenarios so that teams can experience a range of disasters. Through practice, the team will develop their own playbook on how to work together through the unforeseen.
  2. Facilitate environment that allows for early detection – there are many psychological factors that prevent managers from heeding to early warning signs. To address this, the organization should facilitate ways to amplify early warnings. Ways to do this include having the team engage in an open discussion on anomalies in data; during the discussion managers should encourage all possibly scenarios and welcome dissenting opinions without any retribution. Another method that project managers use during a project kick off is to exercise in a project pre-mortem where team members brainstorm anything and everything that can go wrong with a project.
  3. Engage in low-cost, rapid experimentation – once an ambiguous threat is identified, companies need to engage in rapid experimentation in order to analyze and understand how to neutralize the threat. Rapid experimentation should be iterative and should be designed to give the team enough information to analyze and inform a decision. Rapid experimentation can come in the form of prototyping or stress-testing.

Key takeaways

  • An ambiguous threat is an event that can cause an organization an uncertain degree of harm
  • Managers can develop skills for dealing in ambiguous scenarios by taking on small unstructured projects where there is no playbook to guide them
  • Leadership can engage in a process to neutralize ambiguous threats by having teams practice working under pressure, creating an environment for detecting early warning signs, and developing skills and capabilities for rapid experimentation
Recommended Resources:
 

Uncover your strengths and weaknesses with our complimentary assessment. Boost your effectiveness at work and with your team.

Free Resource Library: Access our extensive collection of valuable resources for instant support in your personal and professional growth.

Explore Our Course Library:

Enhance your leadership skills with our diverse selection of courses. Take your abilities to the next level and become a more effective leader and team player.

Testimonials

Our Clients Love the Professional Leadership Institute

Your team will, too! Check out some reviews from our students.
The PLI program was invaluable to our network.
The range of topics delivered, the open dialogue, experience, and examples that PLI brought to each session were outstanding and provided a path for our Franchisees and Managers to look at leadership, coaching, and connecting with their teams in a new light. Many have implemented these strategies in their bakeries and have seen immediate results.
Michelle C.
COBS Bread
Highly recommend to help your team move forward
We have locations around BC and Alberta, so getting people on the same page can be very difficult... Until now. Our entire management team and location managers take the same great courses and then meet monthly online with our coach to apply it to our situation. People are engaged, the courses are excellent, we love our coach, and we are all learning together!
Jason Fawcett
President, Kelson Group
The result has been a transformation of our culture. 
We decided to implement PLI's strategies across the country in over 150 locations and over 3500 employees.  The result has been a transformation of our culture.  People's lives have been positively impacted - professionally and personally.  Morale is high and sales and profits are up as a result.
Daryl Verbeek
Daryl Verbeek
We’ve learned how to fix ongoing personnel issues once and for all
The roadmap laid out set our business up to quintuple in sales.  We've learned how to fix ongoing personnel issues once and for all, attract top talent, and spend our time focused on results, not internal staffing problems.  I highly recommend PLI to you - it's worked for us!
John DeJong
Satisfied Client
I had no idea that running a business could be this fun!
In less than 18 months of working with Trevor, he has transformed my business from being average to exceptional, where mediocrity is not acceptable, where being great is standard.  Working with PLI has allowed me to realize my dream of not simply owning a job, but owning a business.
Justin Bontkes
Principal, Caliber Projects
Our culture has taken major steps forward this year
Our culture has taken major steps forward this year with Trevor’s help.  He is funny, relatable, and his tools are very very practical and have helped us focus and upgrade our teams throughout our retail network. Trevor recently spoke to an employee group, and one person remarked, “I could listen to Trevor all day.”   We would highly recommend Trevor.
Stan Pridham
Founder, KMS Tools
The results have been remarkable
At first, we resisted, “This just won’t work with a law firm.” But we persisted and the results have been remarkable: our client base and profits have steadily improved, and staff engagement and morale is the healthiest its ever been.
Doug Lester
Partner, RDM Lawyers
Helped our fast-growing business become what it is today
I've experienced PLI's approach first hand and it's been crucial to sustaining our growth.  I can't imagine a business that wouldn't benefit greatly from his help.
Brian Antenbring
Founder, TEEMA
Provided practical ways to make positive changes
Trevor was incredibly well-received by the entire organization. He was able to articulate people issues that many of our franchisees were experiencing and provided them with practical ways to make positive changes. We have implemented the Star Chart tool across the organization and see it as vital to building happy, effective teams.
Aaron Gillespie
President, COBS Bread
Scroll to Top

Start Learning Today

For Individuals

Unlock your potential and accelerate your career with sought-after management and leadership skills.

 

Transform Your Organization

For Teams

Book a consultation to discuss your challenges and discover how we can help you build a winning team.

 

Sign Up For Weekly Tips!

Get Weekly Coaching Tips Straight To Your Inbox Every Monday.