Locate and name it
Find your rung on the five-rung ladder, from frozen to acting with confidence, and name how you feel. Putting feelings into words is associated with a calmer response.
Conscious LeaderInner Game
Train Your Tolerance for Ambiguity
from waiting for answers→to experimenting to learn
The Goal
Move forward confidently without waiting for perfect certainty.
Ideal For
Teams navigating restructuring, AI adoption or market shifts.
The Shift
From waiting for answers to experimenting to learn.
The Science
Uncertainty tends to be stressful, and stress that feels uncontrollable tends to impair clear thinking. Naming how you feel, imagining the failure in advance, and committing to one specific next step are each well supported ways to get moving when the answer isn’t clear yet.
The Ambiguity Ladder, step by step
- Bring a stalled decision (pre-work)One live decision you own that has stalled because you can’t be sure yet, with what you’re waiting for.
- LocatePick your honest rung on the five-rung ladder, from frozen to acting with confidence, and one word for how you feel about the decision. Rate your confidence.
- Pre-mortem“It’s 30 days from now and it has failed.” Write three reasons alone, pool them with a partner, and name a counter-move for each. Rate your confidence again; it often drops, and that is the exercise working.
- Climb one rungThe smallest move that gets you up one rung, written as “When [moment], I will [move]”, with a pass-or-fail test. Rate your confidence a third time.
- The 48-hour climbRead the move aloud, add a revisit trigger, and check in with a partner within 48 hours.
The techniques, and why they work
Run a pre-mortem
Imagine it’s six months on and the plan has failed, then list three reasons why. Imagining that an outcome has already happened tends to surface more reasons than asking what might go wrong.
Climb one rung in 48 hours
Commit to one small test: “When …, I will …, pass if ….” In randomized trials, founders taught to treat their ideas as hypotheses to test were more likely to drop or change weak ideas, and if-then plans tend to turn intentions into action.
Selected research
- Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling as implicit emotion regulation. Emotion Review, 10(2), 116–124.
- Mitchell, D. J., Russo, J. E., & Pennington, N. (1989). Back to the future: Temporal perspective in the explanation of events. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2(1), 25–38.
- Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project premortem. Harvard Business Review, September 2007. (Practitioner source.)
- Camuffo, A., Cordova, A., Gambardella, A., & Spina, C. (2020). A scientific approach to entrepreneurial decision making: Evidence from a randomized control trial. Management Science, 66(2), 564–586.
- Camuffo, A., Gambardella, A., Messinese, D., Novelli, E., Paolucci, E., & Spina, C. (2024). A scientific approach to entrepreneurial decision-making: Large-scale replication and extension. Strategic Management Journal, 45(6), 1209–1237.
- Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.
From the research
The thinking behind this lab, published in full: