In my experience, people generally fall into one of two categories:
- High-uncertainty (HU)
- Low-uncertainty (LU)
HU people are comfortable working without a complete understanding of the problem space, confident that they will discover and overcome the gaps in their knowledge and overcome them as they proceed.
LU people are uncomfortable without a reasonable understanding of the problem space, not wanting to waste time and effort building something that they might have to go back and make significant changes to once gaps in their knowledge are discovered.
Neither of these people are better or worse, like most other characteristics of a person in the workplace it’s just how they are, and both have strengths and weaknesses that can be leveraged.
High-uncertainty
HU people are great in situations where there just isn’t a lot of understanding of the problem in your organization. They will dig right in with their can-do attitude and infectious enthusiasm, find the issues, and deal with them. They’ll give you something workable really quickly, but you might have to wait a little while for the solution to be “enterprise ready”.
These people can be less effective in scenarios where the problem space is extremely complicated. In their rush to get started, they generally spend less time reading the documentation and might end up duplicating the mistakes that other’s have made in the past. Situations where documentation doesn’t exist or is very poor are a much better fit for this person. They’ll jump right in and develop an understanding of the problem right away, and are your best bet for building that knowledge quickly.
They also might not be the ideal candidate to solve a problem that isn’t urgent. Long timelines defeat one of their main strengths: speed. While they will deliver a solution fast, it’ll often take them considerably longer to come up with something that can be rolled out to customers or the organization, because of the amount of rework their solution will require. These people thrive under pressure and tight schedules, delivering a solution faster than was thought possible.
If the problem is mission-critical or customer-facing, and the solution has to work the first time, then you might want to consider someone else. The HU’s testing is often not as thorough as it could be, and there’s a good chance that new problems will be introduced by their solution, sometimes as bad or worse than the original problem the solution was meant to fix. Internal tools or processes that have a friendly audience are a good place for this person’s work product. Another great opportunity are proofs of concept. Want to figure out if an approach will work, but don’t want to spend a lot of time or resources to find out? Get yourself an HU, give them an idea of what you’re looking for, and stand back. The lack of strict requirements will allow them to try things and experiment, and possibly produce something wholly unexpected and valuable.
Low-uncertainty
LU people are great in situations where the problem is complex, but documentation is thorough. They are generally more cautious, will see all of the potential issues with any approach, and won’t lead you down any blind alleys. You just have to be willing to give them the time to deliver and resources to answer their questions.
These people won’t start working a problem until they’re satisfied that they understand the problem and its context. They will take the time to consume any and all documentation, interview stakeholders, and question the requirements. If the documentation doesn’t exist or there aren’t any knowledgeable stakeholders, then they can really struggle to get started at all. They often get caught up in the details, miss the big picture, and may sometimes overlook simple solutions.
Need to fix something right away, and you don’t care how it gets done. The LU is not your person. They won’t even get started until they understand what’s wrong and are absolutely certain that they can fix it without any unintended consequences. While admirable, sometimes this approach just takes too long and the caution isn’t merited. Give this person a long-term, strategic project, and they’ll blow you away with their thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and planning. They’ll make sure that every angle is covered, every issue is planned for, and that all of their work will be well tested and documented.
The LU is also not the right person for low-risk high-impact problems. Something that could be done quickly, won’t. Issues that require a quick investigation, and not a thorough deep-dive will take quite a bit longer than expected or necessary. Give the LU big, complex problems that will have a huge impact on the project such as security, inter-team collaboration, or changes to any complex, well-understood subsystem. You can get the best out of them by giving the LU granular requirements, long-timelines, and tasks that require lots of cross-team interactions and high-quality deliverables. After answering their many, many questions, you won’t ever have to worry about them or their project meeting your expectations.
Gameplan
Like all characteristics that make team members different and unique, understanding these differences allows the strategic manager to place these people in places where they can succeed, and avoiding setting them up for failure. You should always be cognizant of the strengths and weakness of team members, and sometimes applying broad generalizations like High/Low-uncertainty can give you a guide for how to think of resource allocation to produce the best results.
Teams combining a healthy balance of both of these types of people, can achieve the best of all worlds. Projects that have been well thought through, guided by proofs of concept that have been quickly implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of different approaches, well documented and tested, an quickly implemented. The strategic leader should be able to combine these different personality types to their organizations best advantage while balancing their needs and strengths and covering for their weaknesses.
The next time you have an assignment, give some thought to how well matched the different members of your team are for it beyond their skillet. You might find that matching the uncertainty of the project to the right team member leads to greater success and job satisfaction.