There are a few strategic traps to look out for when dealing with uncertainties. They are also simple signatures of if you are exposed to asymmetric risk in your organisation.

​The first strategic trap – The premium of perceived optionality

Unconsciously we go to great lengths to avoid the feeling of uncertainty. Our willingness to predict is hardwired in the limbic system and a central part of how we identify possible threats and rewards. To construct a choice and pursuit that objective is how we damper stress and instead turn it into a reward. This expected reward has nothing to do with the actual outcome since we also alter what we perceive to meet our expectations. Acting when nothing needs to be done still makes us feel more secure about the situation. Both as individuals and as groups. In complexity, when entering new domains or forecasting future events. That defines as fat tail events and they cannot be predicted. The time and energy we put into pursuing aspirations in those domains is essentially the premium we pay to feel better about uncertainty. By this reasoning THE key strategic ability is not to do proper planning, prepare for future positioning or pursuit values but the ability to see if there is causality or not.

​The second strategic trap – Strategic agenda, epistemic motivation and epistemic responsibility.

When mitigating risks you also reduce volatility and therefore also take away the possibilities of rewards. In ordered systems where low volatility is achievable this works. However in a perspective of governance, imposing this unnatural order on an organisation that in reality deals with complexity forces it to behave in unnatural ways. This brings the choice to the organisation to either follow the rules or get the job done. Following the rules (strategic agenda) has the consequences of the organisation accumulating asymmetric risk and ignoring potential rewards. Not mitigating or exploiting risk or reward of asymmetric risk. Breaking them makes it very hard to function inside the organisation. A third option, to monitor non strategic agents, naive assets and use what they do as indicative of what decisions to take is proposed to mitigate this risk.

​The third strategic trap – confusing probable, possible and plausible futures.

When solving problems we are trained to think in terms of collecting knowledge, from models, draw conclusions on probabilities of future events. However, it seems that it is not the best way to understand how the world works. Making predictions in complex systems is close to impossible. There is no best or even good practices. Whatever works, works. Understanding the difference is best done in terms of the difference between managing probable or possible futures versus managing plausible futures. When problem solving in complex domains a certain degree of failures must be in the calculation since there are so many different plausible alternatives and outcomes. The preferable action completely depends on the situation and accumulated knowledge and constructions that rely on predictability will quickly become liabilities. A second way of thinking about risk, asymmetric risk needs to be learned and practiced.