speaking writing consulting book tool not-knowing

I write a free weekly newsletter that, confusingly, is also called “The Uncertainty Mindset.” I’ve also built an annotated overlay of the first year of this newsletter that includes summaries of major topics covered and summaries of each issue.

The format continues to evolve but is usually anchored around a 1500-2000 word article and a distraction or two that is often about books, food, beverages, art, animals, or country music. There’s also a playlist.

More than 2400 people seem to like it. And it’s easy to unsubscribe. So there’s really no reason not to sign up here.

Topics

These range fairly widely, but most weeks I’m taking a medium-deep dive into some aspect of uncertainty and not-knowing in daily life or in the context of life in organizations. Current events sometimes take over (read: coronavirus).

On designing training programs for uncertainty

  1. #27, 6/5/2020: Explains two design principles for training programs in dealing with uncertainty.
  2. #28, 13/5/2020: How pizza dough can teach uncertainty management.
  3. #29, 20/5/2020: More about flour, dough, and designing routines to develop capacity to manage uncertainty.

On how businesses should respond to uncertainty

  1. #23, 8/4/2020: Four things businesses should do when suddenly plunged into uncertainty.
  2. #17, 26/2/2020: How to set goals when things are uncertain.
  3. #16, 19/2/2020: How businesses should hire when they’re not sure what new employees will need to do.

On understanding and responding to coronavirus uncertainty

  1. #18, 4/3/2020: Explains why coronavirus represents true uncertainty, and why the precautionary principle is appropriate for responding to it.
  2. #19, 11/3/2020: Explains apparently unreasonable countermeasures are the only sensible response to coronavirus. Unfortunately, this issue has aged far too well in the context of numerous countries that failed to take unreasonable countermeasures.
  3. #20, 19/3/2020: Explains how to progressively respond in a sensible, non-alarmist way to increasing uncertainty. Also, how to build useful and useable emergency food stores.
  4. #21, 25/3/2020: An argument that taking insufficient action against coronavirus will be more expensive than implementing early and disproportionate countermeasures against it. Slightly too late, this issue is now being debated actively