Latest news with #ambiguity
Entrepreneur
20-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
How to Turn Market Uncertainty Into Measurable Growth
Here's how to turn market fog into a roadmap your team can actually follow. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Stocks are wobbling, AI headlines are multiplying, and budgets feel more like Jenga towers than line items. In times like these, it's tempting to go heads down and wait for certainty to arrive. Spoiler: It will not. Pew's February survey found that 52% of U.S. workers are more worried than hopeful about AI's impact on their jobs. That worry has weight. Research in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine estimates burnout now costs employers up to $21,000 per employee every year. As a brand marketer who has steered teams through layoffs, pivots and more "back‑to‑the‑whiteboard" moments than I can count, I've learned one truth: Ambiguity is not a phase. It's the water we are all swimming in. The question is whether we let it pull us under or turn it into forward thrust. Related: The Smart Entrepreneur's Guide to Thriving in Uncertain Times Why brand leaders must own the ambiguity agenda Brand is the only business asset that appreciates with clarity. When stories scatter, equity erodes; when stories align, equity compounds. I argued this back in 2022 during the recession, and today, the same principle applies to internal storylines. If your team cannot see the path, they'll fill the gaps with fear — and fear is expensive. Gartner's latest HR focus survey shows 73% of HR leaders cite change fatigue as their top concern for 2025. Translation: Employees are exhausted by shifting priorities, and leaders are struggling to translate noise into narrative. That challenge is tailor‑made for brand marketers because building a narrative out of chaos is what we do for the market every single day. It's time we turned that muscle inward. Meet the ambiguity breakthrough canvas I adapted Gustavo Razzetti's Navigating Ambiguity Canvas to create a brand‑first tool that does three things fast: Anchor zone: codifies what we know and where our brand already wins. Lab zone: lists uncertainties worth experimenting on in the next quarter. Loudspeaker zone: parks far‑off fears and headline noise, so it stops hijacking meetings. One page, three columns, sticky notes at the ready. The goal is not to solve everything. The goal is to name the fog so it stops running the show. How to run the canvas in four moves 1. Set the stakes with data and vision: Open with metrics your exec team respects: cost of burnout, employee sentiment, the relationship between brand consistency and revenue lift (consistent brand presentation can boost revenue by 33%). Numbers anchor urgency; narrative supplies hope. 2. Crowdsource, then sharpen: Give each participant five minutes to dump thoughts into the three zones. Your job is to push for specificity. "AI" becomes "customers fear we will replace human onboarding with bots." The more precise the note, the easier the experiment. 3. Vote and assign: Three dot‑votes per person. Highest‑scoring items turn into action statements with an owner, deadline and success metric. Ambiguity hates accountability. 4. Broadcast progress: Post the canvas in a shared doc. Every two weeks, move notes: Lab items graduate to Anchor, Loudspeaker items shrink or disappear. Progress, not perfection, keeps anxiety at bay. Related: 5 Startup Marketing Moves That Work Even in Uncertain Times A brand‑led sprint in action Twelve months ago, Spekit's product had outgrown its original box, yet the market insisted on keeping us there. We'd evolved into a full‑scale sales enablement platform, but prospects still waved us off as "that digital‑adoption walkthrough tool." Pipeline stalled, reps stumbled, and the brand equity we'd spent five years building suddenly felt like a liability. Running the Ambiguity Canvas on ourselves, we'd find: Anchor: users raved about our in‑app guidance, but the "digital‑adoption" label trapped that power in yesterday's story. Lab: would an end‑to‑end visual and narrative overhaul shake category bias fast enough to hit this year's ARR target? Loudspeaker: the lingering fear that torching a familiar identity would torch hard‑won awareness, too. We chose ignition over hesitation. In March 2025, we rolled out a ground‑up rebrand: new wordmark, high‑energy gradient system and a sharper octopus icon to signal Spekit's AI "central brain" delivering just‑in‑time enablement wherever revenue teams work. The launch wasn't cosmetic. It was a market correction. We blanketed the internet, pulsed thought‑leadership on the "Change Economy" and armed sellers with storylines that linked live revenue moments to Spekit's AI‑powered guidance. Thirty days later, the data told the story: Website traffic jumped up 27%, but more importantly, engagement was skyrocketing, with average session durations and clicks up more than 40%. Organic traffic from LLM‑generated queries spiked, driving net‑new interest we hadn't paid a dollar to capture. Demo requests spiked, with most coming straight from direct traffic (brand recall in action) and nearly half converting on the spot. Our CEO's launch post punched above its weight with 81 K+ impressions and sparked 590+ engagements in a single day, proving the new story resonated and traveled fast. Anchor locked. Lab validated. Loudspeaker retired. One canvas, one high‑velocity reintroduction, category perception realigned with the company we are today. Watch‑outs for facilitators Vague inputs stall momentum. Keep slicing until the note becomes testable. Dumping into Loudspeaker is avoidance in disguise. Separate distraction from deferred priority. Stopping at mapping turns canvas into décor. Without a sprint backlog, nothing changes. Related: 4 Ways Leaders Can Break Through Uncertainty and Unleash Meaningful Innovation The brand advantage hidden inside uncertainty When the going gets tough, shallow tactics hit a ceiling. Sustainable advantage lives in the story you tell internally first, externally second. My 2022 playbook piece challenged marketers to ask whether a "best practice" sparks joy or just clutters the shelf. The canvas applies the same discipline to decision‑making: if an initiative does not clarify our Anchor or inform our Lab, it waits. Brand is who you are, why you exist and how you deliver. That story, told with conviction, is the signal employees crave when spreadsheets start to wobble. Give them a canvas, invite them to help write the next chapter, and you convert anxiety into assets the balance sheet never shows: focus, creativity, resilience. Book a 60‑minute slot. Bring the sticky notes, the scary headlines and the latest customer win. By the hour's end, you will have fewer unknowns, clearer experiments and a narrative your team can repeat without the slide deck. Uncertainty is permanent. Leaders who ship through it will be the ones who turn market fog into laser‑focused brand equity, one sticky note at a time.
Forbes
06-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why Cutting Leadership Support In Chaotic Times Is A Strategic Mistake
Tom Roberts, Founder of Cranberry Leadership. Coaching global leaders to adapt, lead, and thrive globally. getty 'If the world's on fire, don't hand your leaders a smaller hose.' Predictability is the business sweet spot. In a perfect world, strategy follows logic, market conditions hold steady and leadership decisions are made with clean data and clear visibility. But that world no longer exists—and may never return. Today's senior leaders are navigating a swirling fog of global ambiguity. Not the normal kind, but a real shaking of global economic patterns and alliances. The political and economic rules they used to rely on are shifting. Predictable patterns—quarterly forecasts, regional trends, even internal team dynamics—have gone sideways. The sense of rhythm, the ability to plan three steps ahead, has eroded. And when predictability disappears, so does something else: peak performance. Because decision-making at the top isn't just about data or instinct—it's about mental sharpness. Emotional clarity. The ability to think fast under pressure and still sleep at night. That kind of leadership thrives on stability. It needs a runway. It needs rhythm. But when predictability breaks, something else creeps in. Quietly. Subtly. Ambiguity. And its two enablers: indecision and wait-and-see. These are not benign forces. They are corrosive. They slow teams, stall momentum and leave high-potential leaders paralyzed just when their clarity is needed most. And the corporate reflex in times like this? Cut costs. Delay programs. 'Let's ride out the storm first.' That instinct might be understandable, but it's deeply misguided. Because when you pause investment in your leaders during uncertainty, you're not just saving money. You're creating risk. I've Lived In The Most Extreme Fog I know what it's like to lead through ambiguity—not from a whiteboard, but from inside the storm. Personal: In 2009, I took my first expat assignment in Japan. Not long after, my wife underwent emergency surgery and spent five hard months in the hospital. I had an eight-year-old daughter at home, asking questions I didn't always know how to answer. For two of those months, the hospital wouldn't even let her visit. I was navigating a new country, a new leadership role and a family reality held together by duct tape and denial. National Catastrophe: Then came the earthquake. On March 11, 2011, the ground shook, the sea surged and the nuclear reactors in Fukushima failed. My son was not yet a year old. He was a premature baby who needed formula—formula that required clean water. The doctor told us, 'Don't use the tap.' So, I rode my bike in 10-mile loops across Tokyo, searching for bottled water that no longer existed. Political: And just as the aftershocks began to fade, we moved to Korea, on the very day Kim Jong-un took power. Weeks later, North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong Island. Tensions were high. One U.S. general pulled me aside in what was supposed to be a casual chat and asked, 'Do you know what to do if the shelling reaches Seoul?' That wasn't an abstraction. It was a standing thought I carried into every meeting, every coaching session, every dinner with my team. I had to lead through that. And here's what I can tell you with absolute certainty: In that fog, I didn't need more dashboards or HQ pep talks. I needed someone to talk to. A second set of ears. A coach. A guide. Someone who could hold space for the impossible questions without judgment or consequence. But I didn't have that. So, I stewed. I second-guessed. I carried weight I didn't have to—alone. Support doesn't remove the fog. But it gives you enough visibility to move. And when you're operating outside your cultural comfort zone, with geopolitical chaos around you and personal life on the brink? That clarity is everything. The Cost Of Withholding The Compass When the world gets messy, the instinct is to conserve—to delay investment, pause programs and hope for calmer skies. But leadership doesn't stop during turbulence. It gets harder. And here's the paradox: Just when your leaders need the most support, many companies pull it away. They cut coaching. Cancel development programs. Tell their most senior decision-makers to 'just hang tight.' But ambiguity doesn't wait. Neither do markets. And indecision—especially at the top—gets expensive fast. You don't need to flood your leaders with more noise. You need to give them clarity. Space. Tools. A sounding board who isn't in the chain of command. Because if you want smart decisions in complex times, you can't starve the decision-makers. In times of ambiguity, cutting leadership support is like flying into fog and turning off the radar. Three Principles For Leading In The Fog 1. To The Boss: Don't scrimp on leadership development—especially coaching. When things are most uncertain, your leaders need sounding boards, accountability partners and wise counsel. Coaching is not a perk—it's protective infrastructure. 2. To The Leader: Recognize the complexity. It's not just culture and quarterly goals—it's geopolitical volatility, economic turbulence and psychological strain. Beware of isolation. Keep your mentors close. Keep your coaches closer. 3. To The Team Leader: Your team is watching your body language more than your briefings. Bring confidence, but also bring reality. Create space for honest conversation about uncertainty. Ask how they're processing the world around them. Because no matter how experienced you are, they know the local ecosystem better than you do—and you can't lead it well without their insight. Final Thoughts Remember: Investing in leadership development and coaching during stable times is easy—it fits the budget and the narrative. But real leadership is tested when the future is unclear and the stakes are high. That's when support matters most. Cutting resources in those moments may feel fiscally responsible, but it strips leaders of the very tools they need to navigate complexity, make sound decisions and keep teams aligned. Don't expect clarity from the same leaders you just left in the dark. Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
