Uncertainty and ambiguity - figuring it out

What do I have to do? How do I do it? When should I do it? Many of the decisions you will face in the real world are not well-defined and spelled out. You are not told first do this, then do that, and this is how you do each thing. You will need to figure it out. Have you been trained to be dependent? Independent? Co-dependent? Well?

Independent thinking

Some students have had experiences that lead to independent thinking, and some have not. Often, you hear:



Just tell me how to do it right.

Just tell me what you want.

Just tell me when it should be done.

Your boss might tell you once, but they will not appreciate you constantly asking these types of questions. As one president said in a meeting, ‘If I am doing your job for you, what are you doing here?’. Bosses just want to tell you to‘do X’ and expect you to figure X out. And, they only want to tell you once and do not want to remind you. Many bosses will ask you once, say it once - the rest is up to you. These types of bosses do not want to remind or say it twice.

Dealing with ambiguity

If you are not used to ‘figuring things out’ with uncertainty and ambiguity, it is natural to feel anxiety and feel at a loss. The boss says ‘give me a design spec for X’ - you do not know what a design spec is, and you do not know how to create one. When you are figuring things out you will have lots of uncertainty and ambiguity to deal with and you will always be going beyond your comfort zone. Here are some tips for dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity:



When dealing with new inventions or anything ‘new’, do not be surprised by the unexpected - expect surprises (some good and some bad). Chill and embrace it.

Do not wait till the ‘last minute’ if you have a bunch of unknowns. Start as soon as you can.

When you are dealing with new things, you may need some recovery time when things do not go the way you expect them. The newer something is, the more time you will need. It is likely to be what is called a nonlinear relationship.

Whenever you are given a task, first write down what you know and do not know about the task - the what and the how. This will help you identify the gap you have to deal with. When you plan, you need to include specific tasks that help you fill in the gap; either you need to figure it out, or you need to know/find someone who knows. You want to get this stuff out of the way as soon as possible.



Look for anything different in the status quo over the time window you are considering - personnel, processes, methods, technology, etc. Anything NEW will have some kind of uncertainty associated with it and you need to consider it.

If possible, try to deal with one source of uncertainty at a time - dealing with two potentially unstable tasks at the same time. Crap has a habit of multiplying and feeding off other crap as more and more firefighting is done.

Do not evenly distribute the slack (safety time) across the set of tasks, and do not just lump all of it together at the end either - distribute the slack to where you think you will need it. Tightly schedule and manage everything else.

If you do not know what X is, do some research and see if you can find three definitions or reasonable examples - compare them, triangulate, merge (whatever) - and justify/rationalize your final choice. E.g., boss says prepare a design spec and you cannot find one in the office or one from a previous project and there is no one in the office to ask and you have to create one on your own - look up three definitions and pick one as a good starting point. Don’t just use one as a benchmark without checking out other options.

In your status reports or updates, make sure that you point out risks associated with uncertainty or ambiguity and explain what choices you made, why you made them, and how well they turned out.

In your self-reflections, think about what you have learned from dealing with or experiencing the uncertainties - how can you deal with such issues in the future? What did you miss or what did someone else miss when assigning the ‘do this’?

Do not hide your ‘issues’ or pretend things are ok when they are not - when it gets to the point you need help, get help. There is sometimes the point when you should find the boss - when the uncertainty and ambiguity you are experiencing threatens the task or project. This is where independent turns into dependent and well it should.

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