Most of us are uncomfortable with uncertainty. We feel it in meetings, in emails that demand a quick answer, and most sharply when we are expected to decide. So, we decide. Often quickly. Sometimes confidently. Occasionally wisely. But not always for the right reasons.
In leadership teams and owner-managed businesses, decisions are frequently made not because the evidence is strong, but because not deciding feels worse. Saying “I don’t know” feels like weakness. Delay feels like failure. Uncertainty feels like risk. That instinct to decide in order to relieve discomfort is one of the most reliable ways to make poor decisions. It’s the decision making equivalent of comfort eating.
Under uncertainty, the pressure to decide is often about emotional relief, not better judgement
The hidden driver: discomfort, not judgement
When someone says, “We need to make a decision,” they often mean, “I’m uncomfortable with this uncertainty.” The decision closes the loop emotionally, not analytically. This is understandable. Humans are wired to seek certainty. From an evolutionary perspective, uncertainty signalled danger. Acting quickly, even imperfectly, was often safer than waiting. The problem is that most modern business decisions are not predator encounters. They are complex, ambiguous, and path dependent. Acting quickly does not remove risk; it often locks it in. In these situations, the real question is not what decision should we make? but are we actually ready to decide at all?
Risk, uncertainty and false confidence
It helps to separate risk from uncertainty. Risk is where you can estimate probabilities; uncertainty is where you cannot. In risk, classic forecasting and spreadsheets can help. In uncertainty, they are often theatre – reassuring narratives dressed up as numbers that make us feel better without making us safer.
This is something we have written about before and for the Drucker Forum. Precision in the wrong context is not neutral; it is actively misleading. When conditions are stable, forecasts can inform. When they are not, they mainly perform confidence.
The danger is not using forecasts, but believing them too literally. Under uncertainty, they should be treated as hypotheses, not facts. Direction matters more than prediction. We, for example, are keen to build in agility, flexibility and resilience into our planning for clients, as most operate under some uncertainty.
Forecasts reduce anxiety. They do not reduce uncertainty
Decision pressure and false clarity
One of the most damaging dynamics is false clarity at work. Someone speaks with confidence, others nod, and suddenly the group believes the situation is clearer than it really is. Confidence is contagious. Premature closure is too. This is how false certainty spreads quietly through organisations, reinforced by charts, forecasts, and confident language that suggest more control than actually exists.
This is especially true when:
- seniority substitutes for evidence
- time pressure is self-imposed rather than real
- action is rewarded more than judgement
Under these conditions, risks are reframed as assumptions. Gaps in knowledge are treated as rounding errors. Dissent is quietly parked. The decision feels decisive. The outcome, later, often does not.
“I don’t know” as a strategic capability
In many organisations, “I don’t know” is treated as an admission of incompetence. In reality, it is often a sign of competence.
Saying “I don’t know” can mean:
- we have not tested our assumptions
- the data is ambiguous or incomplete
- the system is more complex than it first appears
- the outcome depends on factors outside our control
None of these are failures. They are descriptions of reality. The problem is not uncertainty. The problem is pretending it is not there. Leaders who can clearly name uncertainty improve decisions downstream. They give permission to explore, to test, to learn. They slow the conversation just enough to prevent avoidable mistakes.
This is not indecision. It is disciplined judgement. In these in situations, a pre-mortem is often useful. In other words, deciding what went wrong before it actually does.
Deciding, committing, and the danger of treating forecasts as facts
Another source of confusion is the assumption that decisions are irreversible. In practice, many are not. A useful distinction is between deciding and committing.
Deciding is choosing a direction based on current understanding.
Committing is treating that decision as fixed and beyond review.
Too often, we commit far earlier than necessary, treating a forecast or plan as if it were a promise rather than a working hypothesis. We stop gathering information. We stop noticing weak signals. We defend the decision instead of testing it. A better approach is to make provisional decisions with explicit review points. To say, in effect: “Based on what we know today, this is the best next step. We will revisit this when we know more.” This reframes uncertainty as something to manage, not eliminate.
Why this pressure hits business owners hardest
If you run a SME, uncertainty is not occasional; it is daily life. Cashflow, customers, people, technology, regulation – all of it shifts faster than the planning cycles most businesses were built around.
That creates a specific kind of pressure. When you are the owner, the question “What should we do?” often lands with nowhere else to go. You are expected to have a view. Standing still can feel irresponsible. Saying “I don’t know” can feel like letting people down.
Add to that the weight of forecasts and plans. They look professional. They reassure stakeholders. But under genuine uncertainty, they are often a performance of control rather than a source of insight. They make us feel safer without actually making us safer. Uncertainty does not disappear because the numbers look neat.
Practical ways to sit with uncertainty
For SME owners, the aim is not to eliminate uncertainty but to work with it deliberately. A few practical disciplines make a disproportionate difference: Sitting with uncertainty does not mean doing nothing. It means doing different things.
Some practical disciplines we see work well:
- separate urgency from importance, particularly where cash or reputation triggers emotional pressure
- name assumptions explicitly so they can be tested rather than defended
- decide what evidence would actually change your mind
- run small, bounded experiments instead of committing to big, irreversible bets
- be explicit about what you are not deciding yet
These are themes we return to repeatedly in Hixsons writing on uncertainty and prosperity. They slow the rush to false certainty without paralysing action, and they replace bravado with judgement.
Restraint as leadership
There is a particular leadership maturity that comes from restraint. Knowing when forecasts are useful guides and when they are simply props. Recognising when the bravest move is to pause and say, “We don’t know enough yet.” Knowing when not to decide. In a world that rewards speed, confidence, and answers, this can feel countercultural. It is also one of the clearest markers of sound judgement.
Uncertainty is not a gap to be filled as quickly as possible. As we have argued, it is often the raw material from which better judgement and better outcomes emerge, if it is handled rather than suppressed. It is a condition to be understood, navigated, and sometimes respected.
The real failure is not saying “I don’t know.” As Drucker put it in different terms, effective decision-making starts with defining the problem properly, not with rushing to an answer. Owners who learn to say “I don’t know – yet” tend to make fewer dramatic mistakes and more frequent, quiet, compounding gains. That is not indecision. It is professional restraint.
How we can help you
We have been here before and we have all the expertise, including non Executive Board qualifications, to help you create plans that are agile, flexible and resilient, so that you will have confidence that you can to overcome the unexpected, mitigate their effect, or avoid them. We can help you monitor the results, model any changes you want to make, listen and discuss with you the best ways of achieving your goals. My book Understanding the Numbers: Make Your Business and Your Life Better helps you avoid mistakes that lowers business value, that I’ve seen time and time again.