We talk a lot about ambiguity.
But we don’t spend enough time giving people the tools to deal with it.
Ambiguity is the nature of life.
The two most important tools to get through it are Creativity and Action.
Creativity does not have to be a grand beautiful plan.
Just an Idea will do.
Any Idea.
This is why we like to hire people from a breadth of backgrounds.
Those ideas can come from anywhere.
The time when you were young and you watched your Grandma fold the tin foil a certain way to perfectly brown a turkey. Maybe now we have an idea for a new thermal spreader.
The time you had to use a screwdriver in your carburetor to start your old beat up car. Maybe now we have a new debug injection mechanism.
Ideas feed all of our work, and they don’t come from doing things the way we have always done them.
The problem with ideas is that they don’t actually get us anywhere.
They lead to us sitting around talking about what we “should” do.
The real path through ambiguity is Action.
Any Action.
Small Actions.
Don’t talk about it.
Just do something.
Then have the discipline to track if it is working.
And have the heart to let it go if it is not working.
If you have to drop it and pivot, that was still a win.
You still did something, and learned from it.
That was more impactful than talking about it.
The path through Ambiguity is Action.
The military uses a concept called an OODA loop.
This is the cycle Observe–Orient–Decide–Act.
Some of you may also have written a simple AI pathfinding program at one point.
This is the same thing.
We are on a pathfinding mission.
I see people spending countless hours sitting in conference rooms bemoaning the ambiguity in our product plans.
If those hours were spent in action – imagine the progress we could make.
Have an idea?
Take a small step.
Test it.
Did it move the ball forward?
Write down what happened.
Take another step.
Every once in a while climb up on a ladder and look back and look forward.
Are you still going the right direction?
If not, learn from it and move on.
It really is as simple as that.
We don’t have to wring our hands in despair of ambiguity.
We need to strengthen our hands working on an idea.