In 1992, a C.I.A. analyst named Cindy Storer began tracking Osama Bin Laden and the network she later identified as Al Qaeda. She was counseled, in a performance review, that she was overly focused on Bin Laden. Colleagues derided Storer and her team as obsessed crusaders. Beyond having to overcome internal skepticism, she was facing vague, fragmented and shifting information about the nature of the threat. Intelligence analysis involves “highly ambiguous situations,” as former deputy director of the C.I.A., John McLaughlin, explained in the 2013 documentary Manhunt. Not everyone could see how dangerous Bin Laden was, and communicating degrees of uncertainty within an organization has its own unique psychological challenges.
Intelligence analysts work in an exceptional context. But the struggles they face are instructive in an era where many jobs require interpreting unclear signals amid fluid circumstances. Employees increasingly have to base decisions on incomplete information while navigating the social complications of ambiguity.
Many businesses face greater uncertainty because the world today is more unstable and interconnected. Disruption, automation and outsourcing have made entrepreneurship and the ability to react quickly to change more valuable. Retailers face ambiguity in sizing up new competitors and weighing opportunities to expand. Jobs in fields like healthcare that have always involved evidentiary and social uncertainties, meanwhile, are increasing in number. Of the 30 occupations projected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to grow the fastest by 2022, 14 are related to healthcare.
The good news is there are empirically validated scales organizations can use to hire employees skilled at handling unknowns. The best is called the need-for-closure scale. Developed by the psychologist Arie Kruglanski and refined down to 15 items in 2011, the scale measures a person’s preference for definite answers over confusion and ambiguity. It can rank candidates on two critical attributes: how likely they are to jump to conclusions and how stubborn they are under volatile conditions. People with a low need for closure weigh evidence more deliberately and are better able to shift directions in light of new information. Employees with a high need for closure deny ambiguity and are more mentally rigid. In tasks entailing high levels of uncertainty — like those central to business and innovation, healthcare, negotiations or diplomacy — that deficit leads to impulsive and inflexible decisions.
Yet hiring employees comfortable with ambiguity isn’t sufficient. Companies also have to set conditions for those employees to thrive. This year, three studies led by the psychologist Jocelyn Bélanger — and co-authored by Arie Kruglanski — suggested an organization's productivity is profoundly affected by how employees with a low need for closure are treated. Nurses comfortable with uncertainty, for example, reported more burnout when their bosses were more hostile, controlling and coercive. Soft power tactics, which allow employees greater independence, were more effective motivation for those low in need for closure, but not for those high in need for closure. Authoritarian supervisors also made it less likely that employees comfortable with ambiguity would manage work conflicts well. A fourth 2015 study, headed by the University of Rome's La Sapienza’s Antonio Pierro, found that workgroups were more productive if those able to calmly scrutinize doubts were grouped with like-minded colleagues.
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Complicating the picture, our ability to cope with not knowing isn’t a static personality trait. Individually and socially, stress makes uncertainty even harder to deal with. Psychologists have discovered, after raising peoples need for closure via a stressful noise, that group members who voiced deviant opinions were more forcefully marginalized. Groups under a high need for closure adopt dictatorial decision-making styles, favoring autocratic leaders who dominate the discussion. In tumultuous times, in short, when organizations most need input from employees who can handle ambiguity, co-workers are most likely to dismiss them. We prefer leaders who project certainty at precisely those moments when certainty is the least warranted.
Not all jobs require dealing with unknowns, to be sure, or benefit from hiring those skilled at managing them. But it’s clear that more jobs today call for employees to function as intelligence analysts of sorts: to always remain flexible, attentive to change and to be acutely aware of what they don’t know. Particularly in moments of turmoil, organizations should give space to decision makers comfortable with uncertainty and surround them with similar team members. In a rapidly-changing world, as Harvard economist Lawrence Katz told me, “what will be rewarded are the abilities to pick up new skills, remain attuned to your environment, and the capacity to discover creative solutions.” Step one is nurturing the right talent.
Jamie Holmes is a Future Tense Fellow at New America and a former Research Coordinator at Harvard University in the Department of Economics. He is the author ofNonsense: The Power of Not Knowing.
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