22/06/2026
Why Our Obsession with Certainty Hinders Us in Times of Turmoil
by Hamish Knox, https://sandler.com/
Humans are certainty obsessed. It’s why we tend to overcorrect in a crisis because the certainty provided by watching from the sidelines is more comfortable than being even one inch on the pitch where risk exists.
Given all the changes we’ve experienced, and continue to experience, in 2026 an obsession with certainty will do us more harm than good. As Tara Swart, Kitty Chisholm and Paul Brown write in Neuroscience for Leadership, “agility of thinking, adaptability and tolerance for ambiguity will be more highly valued than strong technical skills alone.”
Someone with significant experience making choices during uncertainty, Colin Powell, believes that we can make a good decision with 40-70% of total information about a situation (The 40-70 Colin Powell Rule, Matthews Mtumbuka, The National, February 12, 2015).
For some leaders, those in the “fire-ready-aim,” camp might feel like 40% is a stretch. For many leaders, especially those that come from the technical or operational side of the business, 70% might as well be zero because of the ambiguity inherent in the “missing” 30%.
Another part of our obsession with certainty is uncertainty means ambiguity, which humans can tolerate for a little while. Sustained ambiguity becomes anxiety, which causes all sorts of chemicals to be released into our blood as we prepare for fight, freeze or flight.
Anxiety quickly turns to fear, which humans don’t like. People who like horror movies watch for the surprise, not to be afraid. Fear is a low-level stressor which, long term, creates all sorts of damage mentally, emotionally and physically. Unfortunately, if we are obsessed with certainty fear becomes our “normal” state, which roots us to our status quo.
Because our brain is wired to keep us “safe,” which really means “stuck,” we need to proactively overcome our obsession with certainty. The following five activities, done alone or in combination, help in overcoming our brain’s wiring and allow us to act even in the face of uncertainty.
1. Commit to one small proactive activity daily – we’re socialized to believe that massive action is necessary. Sometimes that’s true, but as, Jeff Bezos said, “all overnight success takes about 10 years.” Doing one small proactive activity – whether that’s one jumping jack, calling one friend or writing down one idea to grow our business – creates forward momentum towards an uncertain future, but it takes us away from the certain fear in which we wallow currently.
2. Write down the worst-case outcome – David Sandler believed when faced with a difficult choice the best action to take is to write down the worst-case outcome that could arise from making that choice. If he could live with the worst-case outcome, then he made the choice. If he couldn’t then he figured out an alternative worst-case that he could live with then acts based on that potential worst-case outcome. Writing down is crucial because doing this exercise in our head results in an ever-expanding spiral of worst-case outcomes invented by our brain to prevent us from moving towards uncertainty, which isn’t “safe.”
3. Create a choice trap – to leverage Colin Powell’s 40-70 rule write down all the information we require to make a clear choice then rank those bits of information from “non-negotiable” to “nice to have” (the whole list *can’t* be the former). Once ranked, we create the trap by committing to making a choice once we gather between 40 and 70% of the information on our list. Sharing this information with a trusted adviser and getting them to hold us accountable traps us into following through on our commitment.
4. Practice making quick choices –we’re less obsessed with certainty when our choice-making muscle is strong. Practicing making quick choices strengthens that muscle. Like choosing what to order from a restaurant before arriving or picking a different beverage at happy hour. Those examples may seem silly, and they are the type of small choices that our brain will likely let us get away with until our muscle is strong enough to make larger choices quickly.
5. Adopt a “no bad choices” mindset – the choices we make tend to be judged “bad” or “good” after the result of the choice is known. To overcome our obsession with certainty we adopt a mindset that we don’t make bad choices. By adopting this mindset, we also forgive ourselves in advance for making a choice with available information in the moment and give ourselves permission to adjust that choice when new information becomes available. As a friend of mine once told me, marrying his first wife was the best decision he had made. He subsequently got new information that caused him to make a new “best” decision 😊
Our obsession with certainty is comforting and ultimately does us a disservice. Waiting for “enough” information to arrive provides certainty and a view of the backs of our competitors who chose action. History tells us that those left behind typically don’t catch up.
Hamish Knox founded Sandler in Calgary in May 2011. He and his team help lower mid-market organizations sustainably scale so they can eventually successfully exit. He is the author of two books, Accountability the Sandler Way and Change the Sandler Way, and is a sought-after speaker on topics such as scaling, change management and accountability. In March 2026 he completed the Birken, a 53-km cross country ski race over two mountain ranges between Rena and Lillehammer in Norway.
