The Paradox of Certainty

The biggest paradox in business is that business people and shareholders demand certainty. Profits must be steady or growing. The business meets expectations with little struggle, and the organization behaves like a perpetual motion money machine, creating gains and dividends. The reality is that business is a deeply uncertain activity filled with plenty of chaos. Consumer tastes change, regulations tighten, and the human beings who run corporations are frail and prone to mistakes, so while everyone demands certainty, there is never any guarantee that the expectation will happen. This paradox is central to most business challenges, and I want to discuss it this week. 

When you speak with business leaders, particularly executives, you hear them say, "I expect." It provides a veneer of certainty and cloaks the person in a coating of faux confidence and confidence. Often, you hear conversations like, "I expect the realse to go well," or "I expect that report on my desk at the end of the day." Meryl Streep portrays this language of callous efficiency with awful accuracy in the film, "The Devil Wears Prada."

Often, these expectations come into conflict with reality and the chaos that often surrounds technology projects. Developers sprinting toward a deadline and working long hours make mistakes, introducing software defects. Last-minute changes and defects extend timelines. Finally, power imbalances in organizations create situations where decisions create conflicting priorities that seize up progress. 

The empiricism and transparency that come with agile are supposed to address these problems but bump into the paradox of certainty. Decision-makers with expectations often do not want to know about the defects and dysfunctions that riddle their organizations. Instead, they demand results, and if they hear the word no or that the organization is creating a constraint hurting delivery, they will treat the messenger as insubordinate. It creates an atmosphere of fear where people know things are wrong, but no one takes action because their risk does not offer any reward other than unemployment. It is a scary place to be, and the effect resembles gaslighting behavior. 

I do not have a solution to this paradox. Still, as an agile coach and software professional, I know that we can reduce uncertainty by ruthlessly inspecting and adapting each time we finish a sprint. It also requires the swallowing of pride by decision-makers and developers to address each project's good, bad, and ugly. It is complex and requires discipline, which many business people lack, but those who are successful will make the effort and grow in the process. To break out of the paradox of uncertainty, try having observations and opportunities for growth instead of having expectations. 

Until next time.