Working with ambiguity

This week I wanted to take personal development into my own hands and and explore learning something new every day. So this morning I checked out the learning portal at my workplace and came across a short course on the topic of ambiguity. It felt like a relevant topic, so dived in to the 20 minute course and took notes as I went along.

This blog shares some of my notes from this. I’m sure I will refer back later on to see if I am putting my learnings into practice.

Ambiguity Definition

This could be defined as simply lacking a clear path to follow. In IT projects we are sometimes faced with a lot of ambiguity, which was why the topic felt very real and relevant to me.

Different types of Ambiguity

I learnt that there are four types of ambiguity:

1. Goal Ambiguity

Different stakeholders pushing for different priorities, which can cause confusion with the individuals priorities.

2. Mental Model Ambiguity

Lack of knowledge about a process or topic. That might be a new domain or a company’s process that you are not familiar with.

3. Motive ambiguity

This might cause confusion to what’s driving people through their interactions. I guess an example could be someone is asking you to do something and you’re not sure the reason behind it.

4. Outcome ambiguity

Outcomes are unclear or hidden from view causing the individual to become overwhelmed.

Managing Ambiguity

The course talked thorough 7 ways of managing ambiguity.

1. Confidence in yourself and your ability (This one stuck in my head).
2. Listen — You can’t be an expert in everything, so take time to listen to others and get advice / see from their perspective.
3. No complete picture — You’re not always going to have a complete picture, so get comfortable with making decisions with the information you have.
4. Embrace Change — Change is a part of IT. It’s a fact. Embrace it.
5. Be clear on what’s clear — The question that helped me think about this is, What do we know right now?
6. Scenario planning — This is a new one to me. Does anyone do this? It talked about playing out scenarios to see what might happen before you establish your contingency plans.
7. Controlling your response — Things might feel frustrating with a lack of ambiguity, however, you can respond to the situation.

Top three takeaways

1. Be confident in yourself.
2. Listen to what others have to say.
3. Embrace Change.

Thanks for reading my learning notes.

Best wishes,

Melissa