Entrepreneurs and small business owners have to learn to live with ambiguity, not knowing exactly how things will turn out. Part of the training in becoming an entrepreneurial thinker must include a change in thinking about outcomes in life. In school, we learn that a given math problem has one answer. We learn that a chemistry experiment will nearly always yield the same results. (Is it really an experiment if it’s printed in a textbook and we know the outcome in advance?) Finally, we learn that we should focus on that one career we want, get the education or training we need, and we will be career ready. The problem is that the careers keep changing; always some becoming obsolete and others emerging. The new ones are emerging faster than we can come up with new educational and training programs. This represents a real challenge to technical training now and in the future. For every new whiz-bang technical training program developed in community colleges and trade schools, there are now, and will always be, dozens of technical training needs in the marketplace not being met. Scores of companies are faced with developing their own training programs. Academia will never be able to keep up the pace.

[Bold] Turn Big, Rude Surprises Into Great Opportunities

Those that enter the real-world thinking life is going to be predictable are in for some big and may times rude surprises. Hence, we need to learn to live with ambiguity in a way that we can turn those big and sometimes rude surprises into our next greatest opportunities. This is what the adage “Make lemonade from lemons is all about.” Learning to live with ambiguity doesn’t mean we should give up on planning or dreaming and live a life purely by chance. Living with ambiguity means we should broaden our vision of what we want to accomplish in our lives, our businesses, and our organizations. The vision should have to do primarily with helping the lives of others and secondarily with making money while doing it, not the other way around.

[Bold] Vision Planning Is More Flexible Than Strategic Planning

Vision planning differs from strategic planning in that vision doesn’t include minute details of what we’re going to do to make things happen, but rather the broad outcome over time that is our vision. This is why so many business plans and organizational strategic plans end up on the shelf gathering dust. They contain detailed tactics to accomplish the outcome, but the world changes so much and so quickly that the detailed planning becomes obsolete just as the plan comes out of the printer or is otherwise distributed to the stakeholders.

We have learned to live with ambiguity at Fab Lab ICC over our seven and one-half year history. We try to envision how we can add value for our members and students without worrying in the beginning exactly how we are going to carry out those visions, figuring it out as we move forward. In 2017, in finalizing the building plans for our expansion building, the architect said, “The electrical engineer wants to know what equipment you’re going to put in this other half of the shop space.” I said “We don’t know. It depends on what opportunities for new equipment come up over the next couple of years.” So, we designed an electrical system to be versatile and adaptable to whatever kinds of equipment we’ll be able to buy, or accept as a donation, in the future.

I don’t think anyone ever becomes totally comfortable with living with ambiguity, but it’s like a muscle. The more you exercise your brain to accept ambiguity, the more capacity you build for it. More capacity for ambiguity means you’ll go through life with a much calmer and more peaceful attitude not worrying so much about the small details that don’t go as planned while you remain versatile in driving toward the bigger vision.

Jim Correll can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of Fab Lab ICC or Independence Community College. Archive columns and podcasts at www.fablabicc.org.