Читать книгу Move to the Edge, Declare it Center - Everett Harper - Страница 16

When I wrote the July 2016 letter that opened the book, I was struggling with two significant issues: complexity and uncertainty. The issue of racial justice is complex, and I felt deeply uncertain about how to address it with my company. My “I don't know” moment was how my employees and the larger public would respond as I revealed how vulnerable I felt. There were significant risks if I got the message wrong or created unintended consequences. I decided to show up and speak up, and my message resonated – not just with my employees but also with a larger readership when I published it in Forbes. I've also witnessed leaders, including myself, making poor decisions when confronted with complexity and uncertainty, especially during the summer of 2020. I got curious about how complexity and uncertainty affects decision‐making, and it became an important building block for the Move the Edge, Declare It Center framework.

If you searched “decision‐making under uncertainty” on the internet, you would find thousands of academic citations across the fields of organizational behavior, neuroscience, behavioral economics, and computer science. In addition to the academic work, the topic shows up in the theater (from Hamlet to Hamilton) and even in your decision about which line to get in at the grocery. Suffice to say that a full literature review is way beyond the scope of my brain, your attention, and this book.

Over the course of my career, I have experimented with diverse research, tools, and practices in order to solve complex problems under uncertainty. I learned, through good and bad decisions, to cultivate reliable practices that help make better – though not perfect – decisions in uncertain times. There are four key principles that anchor these practices, and they animate the rest of this book.