Accepting Ambiguity When Making Decisions

When making decisions, you have to appreciate and understand the impact that that ambiguity is going to have on the decision you’re going to make and the risks it carries with it.

As we make decisions, there’s always the unknown out there. We face ambiguity in every decision we make. There are four states of ambiguity that you need to appreciate and understand, as you’re trying to make decisions.

The first state is highly predictable. You know what the future’s going to bring. And with that knowledge, you can make an appropriate decision.

The second state of ambiguity is distinct possibilities, where there are two, three, maybe four possible future alternatives. And what you can do in a situation where there’s distinct possibilities is you can contingency plan based on which of those four might happen.

The third state of ambiguity is a spectrum of outcomes where there’s a very broad, but definable set of outcomes that could happen.

And the last state of ambiguity is complete unpredictability. There’s no way to know what the future is going to hold.

So as you look at making decisions, you have to appreciate and understand the impact that that ambiguity is going to have on the decision you’re going to make and the risks it carries with it.

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