“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain …
In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”
Richard P. FeynmanA theme running through my posts for a while now is the sense of disquiet that permeates our conversations. It sits beyond analysis and logic in the parts of us that are uniquely human. I feel it like an echo, or perhaps like the returning “ping” of a sonar signal sent into the unknown depths searching for what we cannot see.
It makes me wonder - is our discomfort with uncertainty a bug in our psychology, or a vital feature we've been educated to suppress?
We've built careers, organisations, and entire economic systems around the promise of predictability. Centres of power accumulate knowledge, develop dogma, standardise processes, and eliminate ambiguity.
The older we become, the more we are expected to "know" - to have answers, provide direction, and reduce uncertainty for others, even as encroaching wisdom takes us in the opposite direction.
Knowledge may be power, but it can be used to stop us from moving in the interests of those who like where they are.
What if this entire framework is obsolete? What if uncertainty is a signal, and our hunger for certainty is noise?
We have been taught that we can predict competitor behaviour, forecast market evolution, design detailed execution sequences, and control outcomes through better analysis. At one point in my life, when I allowed myself to be hostage to those inside the walls in order to pay the mortgage, I trained as a Lean Six Sigma coach. I learned the language of “DMAIC” -define, measure, analyse, improve, control. I learnt deep statistical analysis, and how to operate a minitab (a sort of digital minicab, that took me to my destination without me having a clue how it got me there) and came to see outliers as the enemy, to be removed to the holy grail of six standard deviations to achieve 99.99966% certainty.
Twenty years later, it has fallen out of fashion as its hype got derailed by reality, and the fact that complexity is a mischievous beast. Once the consultants who made their money training people in the dark arts of LSS got towards market saturation, they moved on to Agile as the new religion, so much better than the old religion. Now, Agile is falling prey to hierarchy, process bloat, top-down control, and, of course, the new religion of AI.
And all the while, systems that we cannot control have their way with us. Interconnected elements with dynamic interactions, nonlinear relationships, and small changes create massive effects. Emergent behaviours generate unpredictable outcomes. Carefully designed processes fail to keep pace with uncertainty that refuses to be modelled.
The obsession of those inside the walls with certainty becomes a liability when the environment changes faster than knowledge can be updated.
A recent article in Psyche Magazine is revealing:
People who are "generally intolerant of uncertainty are more likely to experience depression, anxiety and suicide ideation." Our organisational cultures that demand certainty may be systematically damaging mental health.
Meanwhile, Rory Stewart's exploration of ignorance suggests we've misunderstood the relationship between knowing and not-knowing entirely.
"Knowledge can distract us, mislead us and endanger us," while "ignorance is not simply the opposite of knowledge, but a positive force with its own momentum that gives meaning to our lives."
Inside the Walls, where certainty is something of a religion, the more we optimise for known problems, the less capable we become of engaging with genuine uncertainty, exactly when uncertainty is becoming the primary condition of work.
In their quest for certainty, organisations work with what they know, carving out costs to maintain short-term profits. This is having a curious effect. It used to be that the middle was the place to aim for. It was the home of HBR case studies. The middle was where the most customers were, where accessible money was, where the ubiquitous low-hanging fruit begged to be picked, and where scale would reduce costs.
And, for a while, it was true.
But no longer. The compliant middle is exhausted, as the drive for efficiency and consistent return on capital has led to widespread “enshittification.” The low-hanging fruit is long gone, and we are onto the third pressing of the grape.
The third pressing of grapes, often called "taille," is a less desirable juice compared to the first pressing, which is known as "cuvée." While a third pressing can be done, it yields less juice, typically only around 2.5% more, and the quality is often lower, lacking body and showing coarse tannins.
The evidence is all around us.
Our major supermarkets, which attracted venture capital while the middle was healthy, find themselves cutting corners and gouging wherever they can. Our local supermarket used to be an automatic go-to for the lowest price fuel, but no longer, as they game it for whatever marginal sliver they can gain.
Our High St stores, where we used to talk to real people, are now staffed by automatic checkouts that tell you, without embarrassment, that the cameras are there “for our safety”. The reality is that they do not trust us and want the data. The few remaining humans are there to look after the automatic tills and fill the shelves, not develop relationships with customers.
A narrow definition of efficiency has been bought at the cost of relationships. A visit to the store becomes merely a hassle-ridden, time-consuming and less well-stocked alternative to online.
My broadband provider answers calls with a message that tells me they are committed to excellent customer service and are recording the call for training purposes. They immediately follow up with a message telling me there is a thirty-minute wait time. It is beyond parody, Plusnet….
The middle is well and truly plucked.
Capital is increasingly an outlier, hugely influential but closely held by an increasingly small group. They look to a compliant, captive middle to provide their demand for safe, certain returns. (Perhaps, just as capitalism replaced feudalism, feudalism is making a comeback?)
On the other side of the middle, though, are the other outliers—those who are prepared to engage with uncertainty, searching for what might be found Outside the Walls, where the gods of certainty, predictability, compliance, safety, and deference hold no sway.
Capital may hate uncertainty, but we humans don’t. We long for it, and we are very good at it. It’s how we evolve. At the edge, uncertainty isn't a problem to be solved; it's the medium in which new possibilities emerge.
Breakthrough ideas come from peripheral participants. Those at the margins provide novel ideas and viewpoints. People with "epistemic marginality" - those at the periphery of knowledge domains - often contribute the most valuable innovations.
Capital has never had an original idea—it feeds on those who do, and as we find ourselves having to provide hospice services to the ageing middle, it will need to rely on those who embrace uncertainty for its future health. AI doesn’t do uncertainty well - it feeds off knowledge. One can only hope that it changes the power dynamic with us humans from dependency to interdependency, one step at a time.
The ecological metaphor is precise: Edge effects in natural systems create the highest biodiversity precisely where different environments meet. They don't revitalise existing centres - it moves them through intersection and interaction.
It is what makes the current American soap opera so interesting. Musk is not on my list of those I’d like to have a drink with, but he is a remarkable risk-taker whose path has involved huge personal agency. Trump, on the other hand, has created nothing original and avoids risk. He is a dealer, with little selectivity on what he preys on, as long as somebody else pays the cost of his failures.
In the sister blog to Outside the Walls,
we are exploring how we occupy the uncertain. We understand that uncertainty might be uncomfortable but it can motivate us to put in the work, and that ambiguity naturally focuses us. Not-knowing creates space for new solutions to emerge, and our stress response to uncertainty enhances our ability to connect the dots that those longing for certainty do not see.It means those still optimising for efficiency and predictability are developing the wrong capabilities. Adaptive capacity is the only sustainable competitive advantage because it's the only approach that embraces rather than rejects uncertainty.
Artisanal Practice isn't theoretical. Working with uncertainty requires deliberate practice: taking on projects where outcomes can't be predetermined, working with collaborators based on complementary ignorance rather than just expertise and building experimental portfolios rather than linear career plans. It is about developing comfort with "emergent goals" that evolve through action.
We are at an inflection point where the rate of environmental change has exceeded the rate at which conventional institutions can adapt. Organisations built for efficiency in predictable environments are becoming liabilities in uncertain ones, and those working in them are, in effect, like NPC, the “non-player characters” in video games who are there only for display purposes.
Those who develop uncertainty literacy now - New Artisans - individuals capable of creating value within ambiguity - will have systematic advantages as uncertainty becomes the dominant condition of work. They are the early adopters of post-industrial work patterns - people who've learnt to treat uncertainty as a medium rather than an obstacle.
The centre-to-edge shift isn't just about location or strategy. It's about fundamental human capabilities. Can we learn to work skilfully with what we don't know? Can we build careers, relationships, and organisations that improve with uncertainty rather than degrade? I think the answer is already emerging at the edges. The question is how quickly it becomes the new centre.
I like Seth Godin’s definition of strategy in this context.
Who will we become?
Who will we be of service to?
And who will they help others to become?
Whether we work for ourselves or others, the same imperatives apply:
Choose a domain to be Master of. Something that involves creation, rather than the smoke and mirrors of rentier business models. Make something that matters, that makes a contribution to others, and that you would be happy to explain to your grandchildren.
Choose the company you keep, the people and information that will shape your practice in the years to come, those you can trust and support and who will return that with generosity.
Don’t rush. Craft takes time.
Seek and provide Curation. Be a source of wisdom and authority for those you serve, and find those who you can trust to curate for you.
Choose who to Serve. They will amplify the work you do
What we each do next will not be an exercise in logic. It will be determined by the stories we tell.
We can choose our stories.
Have a great week
Richard
Steps Towards Dancing Solo.
There is an art to be found in uncertainty, and I find it beautifully expressed by Emma Cocker in her wonderful book “The Yes of the No”:
Habitually coupled with the preposition 'from', dissent is often defined by the thing against which it takes a stand or strives to differ. It is brought into existence by the very terms that it wishes to challenge, constituted by the logic of the same system that it simultaneously seeks to dispute or resist. Based on a practice of alterity or of being otherwise, dissent sets itself in willful opposition to the sentiment of the majority opinion: the ascended order. In doing so, perhaps it inherently plays into the sticky trap of binary relations where two partners are coaxed into the hold of a slow-playing conceptual waltz where one term will always lead and the other follow. Each creates the momentum that keeps the other in play: the awkward choreography of an uneasy dance pair forever bound to get repelled by one another. Parallel energies pulling in opposite directions create the dynamic of rotation or revolution: close coupling of two systems transferring force from one to the other and back again. The relationship between dissent and its oppressive antithesis is often symbiotic: each is propelled by the power of their opponent's resistance or reaction. Every new manoeuvre is conceived in tentative anticipation of the other's next step. In order then for dissent to truly refuse the terms of this system in which it finds itself ensnared and encoded it must devise new rules: a new choreography specifically for the purpose of going it alone: for breaking established pattern or protocol, for dancing solo. (my emphasis) Emma Cocker. The Yes of the No. pp9