125: Peak uncertainty and the pickle jar

Q. When do teams want certainty the most?

A. Exactly when it's least available!

Not a joke. Just true. This time we look at the patterns of peak uncertainty: those make-or-break moments when an organisation desperately wants a clear plan but is operating in conditions where rigid plans are most likely to fail.

We bang on about our Go to Market Sprint offering and the uncertainty-native methods behind it, especially Pitch Provocations. The fun of being deliberately wrong to discover what might actually be right.

Including-but-not-limited-to:

• The peak uncertainty paradox: why the moment you most want a clear plan is when plans work least
• Three patterns of peak uncertainty (and why all consultants wish they'd been called earlier)
• Pitch Provocations: testing with words on a page to surface hidden market constraints
• Why "I know it when I see it" is both valid intuition and a political safety net
• The art of being deliberately wrong in the right way
• How to make the mess explicit (and why that's actually helpful)
• The vision chasm revisited ... and why emerging direction beats fixed vision
• Why teams get stuck waiting for clarity while leadership waits for signals
• The cucumber gets pickled more than the brine gets cucumbered ... plus reading labels from outside the jar
• Meeting teams where they already are instead of trying to change how they work

"We're not gonna persuade people to work in a different way. We're gonna meet you where you are... and do the bit that you don't wanna do."

References:

• Pitch Provocations method (episodes 007-009 for introduction): https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy
• Episode 061: Tumbling into the Vision Chasm: https://shows.acast.com/triggerstrategy/episodes/061-tumbling-into-the-vision-chasm
• The "Four U" model: Unpack, Undergo & Unfold Uncertainty
• Multiverse Mapping: https://multiversemapping.com
• Crown & Reach's Go to Market Sprint – email [e-mail]

Find out more about us and our work at crownandreach.com

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