Successful navigation of uncertainty yields advantage
Editor’s note: This is the second of two installments adapted from Jonathan Lewis’ new book, “Brand vs Wild: Building Resilient Business Environments.” The first installment was published in the May 8 Business Outlook.
The enormous sea creature slammed into the side of the boat like a wrecking ball. Steve Callahan woke to a torrent of water plunging in from the ocean. He stumbled through the darkness and found the inflatable life raft, but realized that all of his supplies were still in the quickly sinking sailboat. He dove beneath the waves to get his meager rations of food and water. It took several trips to gather everything, exhausting his frantic muscles. Sitting alone in a six-foot rubber life raft, he spent the rest of the night bailing water with a small tin can, praying for morning.
Callahan had looked forward to crossing the Atlantic his whole life. By the age of 29, he finally built his own sailboat and successfully made the formidable voyage. He was only a week into his return journey when a large sea creature smashed his boat and sent it to the bottom of the ocean. Callahan was now 800 miles west of the Canary Islands, drifting away from civilization with little more than a couple of flares and a few days’ food and water.
It was 14 seemingly endless, sunbaked days before he even saw another boat. He immediately shot a flare, but the would-be rescuer just sailed away. Two weeks turned into thirty days, which stretched into fifty. Up until this point, no human in recorded history had survived more than thirty days adrift at sea. By now Callahan was fending off madness. He kept a daily log during the ordeal and later wrote that he was “… stretched so tight between my body, mind, and spirit that I might snap at any moment.” He was convinced that “he might go mad at any time.”
On day 40 Callahan’s life raft developed a tear. Barely clinging to life, he spent the next ten days bailing water endlessly from the sagging raft. By day 50, he could go on no longer. His entire being was exhausted beyond limit. He was ready to give up.
Most brands view uncertainty the same way Callahan looked at his perpetually sinking raft, as a problem to be fixed rather than a given to be exploited. We spend most of our time trying to bail out as much uncertainty as possible from our sinking brand, hoping that at some point the ocean will run out of water. In the end, we exhaust ourselves in a futile pursuit of security that doesn’t exist.
The truth is that uncertainty is as certain in marketing as it is in life. And in business today it is just growing and accelerating. Today’s most successful brands don’t try to avoid or “fix” uncertainty; they embrace it.
Mark Parker, Nike’s confident but softspoken leader, who was named “The World’s Most Creative CEO” by Fast Company, sat down with the publication to explain how Nike deals with uncertainty and change. In the interview he emphasized a new mindset, saying, “Things are accelerating. … How do you adapt to your environment and really focus on your potential? To really go after that, you have to embrace the reality that it is not going to slow down. And you have to look at that as half full, not half empty.”
Embracing uncertainty doesn’t mean that you passively accept it. To truly succeed, you must look at uncertainty as a chance to gain an advantage. Parker goes on to say, “We try to help accelerate the change ourselves. … If you get that it’s an opportunity, you’ll want to.” In a hyper-connected world with instantaneous communication, uncertainty reigns. But it doesn’t have to be your adversary. The anxiety you feel because of the ceaseless unknowns is shared by everyone, which means whoever can better navigate that common uncertainty gains the advantage.