Have you ever been in a meeting where you’re expected to make suggestions and offer up ideas to work more effectively, yet when something new gets suggested its rarely met with enthusiasm?
The room goes quiet, and then someone says: ‘Yes, but we’ve always done it this way.’ Or: ‘We tried it before and it didn’t work.’ Or people nod and say it’s an interesting idea – but no one really means it’s interesting. They’re just trying to be polite and not say ‘no’, – because inside they’re thinking no. And nothing changes.
It is tempting to put this down to culture, or resistance, or a lack of ambition. And perhaps all these things are at play to some extent. But there is something more fundamental going on, and it is worth understanding – because once you see it, you start to spot it everywhere.
Uncertainty is difficult for our brains to manage
Our brains are wired for survival – and this means that we seek certainty, even when the certainty on offer is a worse outcome.
So when faced with a potentially better solution (but one we haven’t tried before, so it might not work), we can’t help but default to wanting to stick to the way we’ve always done it.
We continue to send direct mail even though the results are declining. We stick to the outdated processes that no longer serve us. We run the meeting in the same format that everyone quietly hates. At least we know what we’re dealing with then. We would rather guarantee failure than risk the discomfort of experimenting with something new and possibly succeeding.
This is not weakness, and it is not stupidity. It is your brain – and your team’s brains – doing exactly what they are designed to do. When faced with uncertainty, the brain interprets it as threat. Cortisol, the stress hormone, floods in, and blood moves away from the prefrontal cortex – where we do our clear thinking, make decisions, and regulate our emotions – towards the organs readying themselves for fight, flight, or freeze. In that state, thinking straight is genuinely hard. The cognitive load of properly evaluating a new idea or a different way of working becomes too much. So we don’t. We reach for what we know, what feels safe, what is certain. The pull towards the familiar becomes almost irresistible – not because we are closed-minded, but because our brain is doing its job.
Its safer to stay busy
It is also, I think, one reason many leaders choose – consciously or unconsciously – to stay busy. Filling the diary, staying deep in the operational detail, never quite having the headspace to give proper thought to a different way of doing things: that is not poor time management. That is self-protection. It feels safer to be really busy than to tackle a difficult conversation, make a high-stakes decision, or think seriously about big-picture strategy. If you recognise that pattern, my Focused Productivity training and workbook is worth a look. (link at the end)
In my experience, this threat response is one of the reasons innovation initiatives can often fail. Not because the idea was wrong. Not because the execution was poor. But because, somewhere in the process, the people involved made a subconscious choice to take the certainty of failure over the discomfort of not knowing whether it will work. In trying to avoid uncertainty, they guarantee the outcome they were trying to avoid.
As a leader, knowing this can help how you respond to resistance. The colleague who keeps raising objections to a new approach may not be obstructive – they may be in a threat state, reaching for the familiar because it feels safer than the unknown. The team that reverts to old behaviours after an away day may not be uncommitted – they may simply be doing what brains do when the safety of being together wears off and the uncertainty reasserts itself.
When you know that this could be the cause of ideas going nowhere, innovation stalling, and the same patterns repeating while the world changes around you – it helps you ask better questions. Instead of wondering what you’re doing wrong, the more useful question is: what would help my team to feel safer, more certain? That might mean being clearer about what is staying the same, not just what is changing. It might mean making the next step smaller and more achievable, so people experience the reward of progress rather than the vertigo of the unknown. It might mean naming the uncertainty honestly – yes, you can be certain about uncertainty, and it can help to call it out – rather than projecting a confidence you don’t entirely feel. It might mean asking your team what their concerns are and what you can do to help.
How does uncertainty impact you?
And it is worth applying the same lens to yourself. When you find yourself clinging to a way of working that you know, deep down, has run its course – ask whether that choice is coming from conviction, or from the comfort of the familiar. Staying the course can be a considered decision. It can also be your brain’s entirely logical attempt to avoid the discomfort of change.
The irony, of course, is that in a world that keeps changing, staying still is no safer than moving forward. The ‘how we’ve always done it’ option carries just as much uncertainty as trying something new. It just doesn’t feel that way.
If this resonates and you’d like more practical thinking for leaders navigating change, pick up the free Focused Productivity Leadership Training here – and learn why the busiest leaders are often the least effective, and exactly what to do instead.
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