Healthy and unhealthy ambiguity
I’ve worked in startups for my entire professional life of more than ten years. In that time, I’ve learned that the name of the game in business is ambiguity. Ambiguity is what opens up opportunities for startups. While incumbents may see fog in an area, startups see an opportunity.
Over the years, I’ve had to deal with so many different forms of ambiguity that I’d safely say that it is one of my strengths. During that time, I’ve learned through experience that there are healthy and unhealthy forms of ambiguity, and each can be dealt with differently.
For example, it’s okay for startups to have not yet found the different components of product-market fit. Startups often don’t know the ideal UX for their product or haven’t identified the core value proposition. This is a healthy form of ambiguity. Entrepreneurs need to live with the feeling that they haven’t yet found the correct balance of parameters.
At the same time, it’s unhealthy to have ambiguity around what the current experiments are. In the past, the teams I’ve worked on, and I have followed our intuition without fully forming a hypothesis. In these cases, since we didn’t have a prediction and a framework for analyzing feedback, once we build something and feedback starts to roll in, we don’t know what conclusions to make.
Another example involves careers and jobs. I think it’s okay for those in a startup or small organization not to know what position they could have in the company in a few years. The process of wearing different hats and growing the company usually clarifies which direction each teammate should go. We find our path through doing.
On the other hand, it’s not okay to have ambiguity around roles and responsibilities. Even though people may be pitching in wherever they can, there should always be clarity around who is accountable for critical decisions and tasks. I’ve experienced situations that felt like a baseball falling in the middle between two outfielders. Each teammate assumes that the other will catch the ball, and as a result, the ball falls to the ground. Worse, the teammates may proverbially run into and hurt each other, and the ball still falls to the ground.
To me, dealing with ambiguity requires first identifying the type of ambiguity.
If it’s of the healthy type, then it is worth acknowledging it and living with it.
If it’s of the unhealthy type, then we need to take action to remove it. I often turn to structured workshops like anonymous retrospectives and silent brainstorms. Ambiguity, by its nature, can often lead to emotional, unproductive conversations. By adding structure to the conversation, I find it’s easier to focus on the problem at hand and address it systematically.
Have you noticed examples of healthy and unhealthy ambiguity in your work?
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