How do you reduce uncertainty in your business? 

Exploration is the norm. It’s not necessarily because people think of it that way, but because the default nature of a new business is not knowing. There is no blueprint yet for building, marketing, selling and delivering new value for customers. The first step is (or ought to be) understanding the market needs. This requires interviewing potential customers and running experiments all before building any of the product.

In established businesses, leaders and employees assume the blueprint they use to execute on the business is fixed. But as the last few years demonstrate, little is fixed. Pandemic, war, supply chain issues, ransomware attacks, inflation–it’s crazy out there! All these events ripple across the business landscape, disrupting the markets. The blueprint maybe doesn’t work anymore.

How do you fix that?