Not long ago, many leadership challenges could be framed as problems to be solved.
With the right data, the right expertise and a clear decision-making process, organisations could move from analysis to action with confidence. Today, that confidence is increasingly hard to sustain.
Geopolitical instability, rapid technological change, shifting stakeholder expectations and persistent organisational tensions mean that leaders are often asked to decide without clarity, alignment or even agreement on what the problem actually is.
In these conditions, uncertainty is the context in which leadership happens, yet many leaders continue to rely on decision-making approaches designed for a previous era.
When traditional decision-making stops working
Most management tools assume that problems are stable, objectives are clear and cause-and-effect relationships can be identified. These assumptions can make sense in relatively simple environments, but they break down in complex ones.
In complex settings, decisions rarely lead to predictable outcomes. Actions interact with organisational cultures, professional logics, political pressures and human emotions in ways that cannot be fully anticipated. More data does not necessarily reduce uncertainty but it can amplify disagreement.
From research into governance, accounting and organisational decision-making, it’s been repeatedly observed that what fails in these contexts is not leadership capability, but the expectation that complexity can be resolved through linear thinking. When leaders ask, “What is the right answer?”, they may already be asking the wrong question.
Uncertainty is not the enemy
A common response to uncertainty is to try to eliminate it and simplify, standardise or accelerate decisions in the hope that clarity will emerge through action. However, uncertainty is not something leaders should aim to remove. It is a signal that multiple values, interpretations and futures are in play. Effective leadership in complex environments begins by recognising uncertainty as a resource for learning, not a weakness to be hidden.
This requires a shift from decision-making as closure to leadership as sense-making. The task is less about choosing quickly and more about creating the conditions in which better judgement can emerge over time.
The role of the Maieutic Machine and other frameworks
On the Managing Complex Business Challenges course, we work with a range of conceptual and practical frameworks designed to support this shift. One of these is the Maieutic Machine.
Rather than providing answers, the Maieutic Machine structures inquiry. It helps leaders slow down decision-making in order to surface assumptions, question problem framings and explore the implications of different courses of action. By making the reasons behind decisions visible, it enables more reflective, collective judgement.
Alongside this, we draw on frameworks that challenge familiar distinctions between strategy and execution, data and judgement, control and trust. Leaders who engage with these approaches often report a subtle but important change, which is that decisions become less about defending positions and more about exploring possibilities.
What effective leaders do differently
Leaders who are able to navigate uncertainty tend to share a number of characteristics. First, they treat decisions as ongoing processes rather than one-off events. They recognise that revisiting and reframing decisions is a sign of responsibility, not weakness.
Second, they use data as a prompt for dialogue, not a substitute for judgement. Numbers matter, but their meaning is never self-evident. Interpretation is a collective, social process and something to explore collaboratively.
Third, they create spaces for structured reflection, because complex problems cannot be solved in isolation. They require conversation, challenge and the willingness to remain with ambiguity long enough for new insights to emerge.
However, these capabilities do not develop by accident. They require practice, exposure to real cases and the opportunity to experiment with different ways of thinking.
Learning to lead without certainty
Complexity should not be seen as a passing phase, as it is the condition under which modern-day organisations operate. For leaders, the question is no longer how to restore certainty, but how to lead wisely without it.
Developing this capability involves unlearning as much as learning. This means letting go of the expectation that good leadership always means clarity, speed and control. It means becoming comfortable with asking better questions, rather than supplying quick answers.
This is precisely the kind of work we explore on the Managing Complex Business Challenges programme. By combining research-led frameworks, practical tools and peer dialogue, the course offers leaders a space to rethink how they approach decisions when the rules no longer apply.
Because in today’s world, leaders should be worrying less about mastering complexity, and instead focusing more on learning how to live with it, thoughtfully and responsibly.
