Certainty, probability, risk

Certainty tells us that we’ll achieve what we intend to achieve. Many people want certainty before they act. They don’t want there to be any risk.

And that’s fair enough. No one wants bad things to happen.

But paralysing action prevents good things happening too.

Switching your mindset from certainty to probability can help. Probability tells us that we’ll probably achieve some of what we intend to achieve. A high probability means we don’t need absolute certainty. That’s a part of being agile.

When you’re close to the action, for example, when you’re speaking directly with users and building things to solve their problems, you have a very good feel for probability. You have a good sense for which actions will achieve our goals and which won’t.

But other people don’t have that same sense. How we talk about this, as a group, is important.

Talking about probability

Let’s look at that in a high-stakes context: the international hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Watch this scene from Zero Dark Thirty and come back.

There are a few interesting notes.

The chair frames the discussion around certainty first: ‘Is he there or is he not there?’ Two binary outcomes.
A previous call that turned out to be wrong means the group’s sense of how to make a fortuitous call is off.
There’s an explicit mention of favouring probability over certainty, but no one makes a call based on the percentages mentioned (60%, 80%, 95%, and 100%).
It’s not clear what level of probability is acceptable across the group.
Maya, who’s been on the frontlines, resulting in locating a compound that may house Bin Laden, presents high probability as certainty. She uses influence to try to steer the decision.

How does this compare to decision-making meetings you’ve had? What would you do differently next time?

Using options to reduce risk

Later on in the film, they’re still stuck on whether to act. The evidence hasn’t provided enough information to de-risk the decision entirely. Watch the hallway scene and come back.

‘If we were gonna act, how would we do it? Give us options.’

This moves everything along. Next, they plan a targeted operation with a group of special forces. The special forces are very good at what they do, which increases the probability the overall initiative will succeed.

How do you use options? What are the different types of approach for a given situation? How can you break big decisions down into smaller chunks of risk, and how can you de-risk those to improve the probability of an initiative?

Being agile

That’s it, that’s a part of being agile. Taking a big goal with lots of risk, and breaking it down into smaller chunks which you work through to improve the overall chances of success.

‘We don’t deal in certainty, we deal in probability.’