Embracing ambiguity and seeking clarity is a hallmark attribute of growing into a senior band. At this stage, people look up to you. No one tells you what to do. In fact they ask you what you want to do.
The good part is you are treated as a principal and the bad part is no one teaches you how to be a principal. You are expected to behave like one.
I often see seniors/leads/principals struggle with ambiguity. Rightfully so! I did struggle my part. To make things easy for me I created my own systems/methods/frameworks to help me. I thought my struggles are purely mine but looks like the struggles are universal.
Today I want to share one method with you all to embrace ambiguity better. The method is simple but powerful. Don't brush it off for its simplicity for simplicity is sophisticated. I call it QUESTIONATHON.
When you have no idea of the terrain, how to move forward, what is in and what is not, use questionathon. The method is brilliant when it is super ambiguous.
The big idea is simple - you ask a bunch of questions that are circling in your mind and find answers as you move along. that is all. The best part is nature and texture of your questions change as you gather more information.
It is like walking in a pitch dark forest by carrying a pencil torch. The torch shows some light to some distance. As you keep walking you keep covering more distance. You discover new information as you keep walking. You don't know the entire landscape but you can see 20m ahead of you at a time and that is good. The nature of your questions change every 20m and you keep finding answers as you move.
This method works like a magic because neurobiologically it does three things. First things first, it primes your brain by asking a question. When you put a question or to do item in your brain, it can't help but focus. That is priming. When you don't complete the item or answer the question, the Zeigarnik effect kills you. This gives you the needed focus. Your acetylcholine helps you. Your search gets more pointed. This way you get into the progressive discovery bandwagon.
The second best thing that happens is, slowly you understand you cannot answer everything by yourself. You will start making the best use of your partners and stakeholders. You will start embracing WHO not HOW.
The third thing is, when you write things down in a questionathon, your learning is accumulated in one place. You will start mapping categories automatically. You will start connecting dots backwards and you will start seeing patterns emerging out. The categories help you get even more prioritised. You slowly understand, you can't gulp an ocean. You get intelligent around what to focus and what not to.
You feel like sharing all the goodness to other members and they start adding their questions. Collaboratively you will find more answers and the distributed cognition is insane.
Slowly clarity emerges. It is a process.
