Ambiguity – How much is the right amount?

Almost all of us have and most of us try and follow the law of maintaining power through ambiguity. But in a leadership position it is crucial, and almost make or break, to know when to stop being ambiguous and draw clear boundaries. The knowledge of the appropriate degree of grey can mean the difference between an initiative being successful and completely failing. As with most things, the degree of grey is a variable that depends on the definition of the end goal and the size of the team or organization trying to drive towards the success of that goal.

How does ambiguity help?

• Spawns Creativity: Ambiguity always keeps people trying to guess their next step and their intentional attempt is to overcome the ambiguity, which very often does lead to creative and innovative outcomes in the right direction.
• Productive Competition: Some level of ambiguity in direction and control even allows for a great deal of productive competition.
• Avoid Unproductive Challenges: I have met people who would maintain ambiguity in how much they communicate to ensure that the path taken to the end goal remains unchallenged until the alternatives are reduced to a minimum. Ambiguous information flow is one of the only ways that work when it comes to getting what you want in a pseudo democratic environment.
• All Round Perspective: Ambiguity in organizational structure, in addition to spurring competition, ensures a somewhat flat organization; and can help the leader get a better perspective of the functioning machinery
• Shielding Lack of Clarity: Ambiguity is a very useful shield especially when the end objective is not very clear but the direction has very many and overlapping alternatives

In the modern day we see cut-throat competition, no matter where you look politics, business and even religion! And without doubt, everyone has an agenda or an end objective that is lesser than the greater good. While we all talk and write about transparency and seamless flow of information, in a world with absolute symmetry of knowledge (presence or absence of it) there would be no competition and hence it would stifle growth and competitiveness. But, human nature as it stands, cannot survive in a world with a ceiling on top and four walls – he must grow. In a world, or any cross section of it, of limited resources and potential, the room becomes one with a ceiling that contains a small exit. To grow therefore man must overcome adversaries to find their way through the bottleneck and grow. As resources get more constricted, everyone must maintain or attempt to maintain leadership through ambiguity. Overlapping ambiguity is often like putting layers of grey together until it is a dirty black. Hence the importance of the need to know where the black and white must show separately and where the grey is productive.

To come to a meaningful conclusion on the subject, I have have to go back to the banality of 2 X 2 matrices to define the right amount of grey. I must at this stage make a few confessions of my own lest this be misinterpreted.

• My analysis is based not only on my working experience but from what I read and see around me in all spheres of life
• My 2 X 2 is based purely on my attempt to understand the problem of how much grey is the right amount of grey and not based on elaborate research of human behavior in leadership positions. I would like criticism and counter opinions
• Some of the terms used do not have a lot of referential basis and are a figment of my thinking process

As I have mentioned before, the right amount of grey is dependant on two factors

1. definition of the end goal
2. size of the crew driving towards that end goal

To that end I have defined the following two categories of End Goals.

1. Direct Benefit End Goals - End goals that are targeted towards a decided benefit with no other factors or goals deriving from it, while it may derive from many In-direct Benefit End Goals (explained in the next point). E.g. top line and bottom line growth, winning the mayoral elections, outranking competition in a scholarship examination.
2. In-Direct Benefit End Goals – End Goals that contribute to a Direct Benefit End Goal and are essentially meaningless unless defined in perspective. E.g. Employee Satisfaction (drives productivity and profitability), maximizing campaign contribution (ensures a bigger campaign and hence the potential victory in the Mayoral votes), etc.       

The size of the crew, ironically, is itself a dependant variable and has some ambiguity around it. The ambiguity can, in some sense, be explained as the difference of importance between a 2 people crew trying to manage a $ 2 Bn portfolio of wealth for a certain RoI and a 200 people crew trying get the same RoI through a transportation business. In an attempt to meaningfully resolve this will need us to define crew size standards and that is quite outside the scope of what I am trying to achieve here. So I will use economic value per employee (EVE) as a definition – typically (and there are definitely exceptions) a high EVE means a smaller crew and a small EVE means a larger crew, assuming that the end objective is measured in congruent terms (like RoI). I will leave the definition of EVE in some degree of ambiguity but I think most readers will easily understand what that means in broad terms.

So now that we know what the parameters for measuring degree of ambiguity let’s move towards defining what level of ambiguity is the right amount. Hence the matrix below.

LOW GREY

This is applicable for high stake outcomes that are owned by a small band of people/employees. A very typical example is the CXO office comprising of the CFO, CEO, CPO, COO, etc. responsible for the outcome of the next shareholder meeting. At that level of decision making and outcome, it is crucial for everyone to be on the same page in terms of what needs to be achieved at the end of the race. The only aspect of ambiguity that can be left is in terms of direction setting of the individual towers. Any greater ambiguity without consensus at that level generally leads to disagreements as every member will have stake in the outcomes; this can lead to disaster. Hence, the level of ambiguity should be minimal and only to the extent of how stated objectives are to be implemented towards common goals.

MEDIUM GREY

This is applicable for the likes of senior and middle management, who will be responsible for the execution of executive objectives. What is critically important to remember with the people providing oversight of execution is that they also have a significant stake in the outcome and hence must have relative clarity of strategic decisions, well defined structural clarity and end objectives. This level of personnel will be defining targets and metrics for those in the lower ranks of the value chain. To that extent it is often constructive to maintain some ambiguity about the vision and other abstracts allowing for creative outcomes and freedom of choice in terms of how stated objectives can be achieved.  

LIGHT RAIN CLOUDS

These are the people on the ground, managing the execution, typically junior management and the equivalent. At this level it is important to have clarity of the tactical tasks that are to be achieved and the measures of success that will be used to measure quality and other parameters of the task at hand. This layer, most often comprise of people without the big picture and a tendency to raise objections and challenges to the way the big picture is to be painted (exceptions to this thumb rule however must be treated as such). Hence keeping the big picture abstract (e.g. “becoming the best customer service company” really conveys no strategic direction but a good feeling) is important to ensure smooth functioning. What needs to be enforced however, is a set of measures of success in line with the overall objectives being set by those in the Medium Grey.

Some level of control and structural ambiguity is sometimes maintained to allow for healthy competition that fuels creativity albeit with necessary oversight – healthy competition very often becomes unhealthy rivalry turning into a destructive duel. 

HEAVY RAIN CLOUDS 

These are the actual executioners – typically low on maturity and ability to comprehend the world larger that instruction driven outcomes. Any strategic or control system clarity means very little at this level except for defined metrics and tasks. A low level party worker or back office personnel will have to take task orders from a variety of people and explaining to him how that will contribute to the overwhelming success of the organization takes a lot of effort and very often wasted effort. Making control structures very transparent also leads to hierarchical thinking in the mind and can be counter productive.

A word of caution…

It is important however, at all states of grey, to know the exceptions. A creative and visionary within the Junior Manager should not be stifled with ambiguity because his inputs and thoughts might actually be well worth listening to. Similarly a non-mission-critical support function’s middle manager might be left with a little more ambiguity to ensure a path of least resistance where the support is delivered and the objectives are not challenged. One must, therefore, know the machinery very well before deciding on the level and quantum of ambiguity to thrust upon.  

It is also important and essential to follow up on ambiguity. Ambiguity is not the equivalent of keeping people in the dark. Unless otherwise proven, one must assume that everyone is intelligent enough to figure out some or most of the puzzle. Questions and clarifications to that end must be responded to with a balance of black & white and grey.