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Thinkers50 London Summit: 5 Leadership Ideas Worth Stealing

Thinkers50 London Summit: 5 Leadership Ideas Worth Stealing

by | Nov 11, 2026 | Leadership, Leading Through Uncertainty, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

What happens when the world’s most inspiring corporate leaders and leading management thinkers stop being polite and start getting real?

No, it’s not the opening to the nerdiest The Real World season ever recorded. It’s what happened last week at the Thinkers50 London Summit.

The conversations on stage and throughout the 600-year-old Guildhall were honest, raw, and fascinating. The deep dives into purpose, technology, and talent that occurred the following day were challenging and inspiring.

Here are my five most memorable ideas from London.

 

Dilemmas reveal your values

Erin Meyer, author of “The Culture Map” and INSEAD professor

Most corporate values are useless because they’re absolute positives, terms like “integrity” that have no good alternatives, only opposites (Who would say they have a value of deceit?). If you want values that truly guide people’s behavior, identify the common dilemmas they face and set up a choice between two options.

For example, if you’re told that there may be layoffs in four months but that nothing has been decided, do you tell your team? Yes, that’s the value of Transparency. No, that’s Team Stability.

 

Manage problems. Lead from opportunities.

Jesper Brodin, former CEO/President of Ingka Group, IKEA

There’s a difference between managing (and managers) and leading (and leaders). Managing focuses on the how, and managers derive their authority from titles and their place in the org chart. Leading focuses on the what and why, with leaders using influence, trust, and shared values to inspire commitment.

Organizations need both. Problems occur when we conflate the terms (and roles) and end up doing only one or the other. Leading, as Jesper explained, requires dreaming and optimism. How many people make time for that?

 

“Meat Proxy”

Rahaf Harfoush, NYT best-selling author of “Hustle & Float” and executive director of the Red Thread Institute

Friction, struggle, discomfort. These are an essential part of the human experience because they require critical thinking, creativity, and the development of values. AI tools are optimized to eliminate these things and deliver non-controversial, frictionless answers quickly.

When a human accepts AI output without checking it, passing along AI slop, they are a Meat Proxy.

 

Most average leaders had lots of great bosses

Liz Wiseman, author of “Multipliers” and lecturer at Stanford University

As a follow-up to her book “Multipliers”, Liz Wiseman explored how people grew to become Multipliers, the leaders who use their intelligence to amplify, leverage, and maximize the capabilities of the people around them.

She found that poor leaders had lots of bad bosses, great leaders had a mix of great and bad bosses, and average leaders experienced mostly great bosses. To become great leaders, people needed to experience the contrast between great and awful so they could choose how (and how not) to lead.

 

It’s OK to not have a purpose

Gianpiero Petriglieri, professor at INSEAD

What’s your purpose? I hate this question because I feel like I should have some brilliant, life-changing answer that causes the clouds to part, a ray of light to shine down, and a choir of angels to sing through the heavens. But usually my answer is, “To get to tomorrow?”

Which is why I loved Gianpiero’s answer that often you only see your purpose when you look back, and that the most important “thing in life is to just do the work, have intent, and be in the making. Don’t find your way, make your way, then commit. Choose how to make. Choose how to live. And always make sure it is your choice.”

FAQs

How do you write company values that actually guide behavior?

Name the dilemma, not the virtue. Erin Meyer, author of “The Culture Map” and an INSEAD professor, says most corporate values are useless because they are absolute positives like integrity, which have no good alternative, only opposites. Useful values set up a choice between two good options, such as Transparency or Team Stability when layoffs might be coming.

What's the difference between managing and leading?

Managing focuses on how work gets done, with authority that comes from titles and the org chart. Leading focuses on what and why, using influence, trust, and shared values to inspire commitment. Jesper Brodin, former CEO of Ingka Group, IKEA, says organizations need both, and problems start when leaders do only one.

Your Team’s First Fix Depends on What’s Missing. Not What Hurts.

Your Team’s First Fix Depends on What’s Missing. Not What Hurts.

by | Oct 27, 2026 | Leadership, Seamless, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

“Here’s the team effectiveness playbook,” my manager said as he plopped an inches-thick binder onto the table between us. “Follow the instructions, update the slides, and the project should be pretty straightforward.”

It was not straightforward.

And that was before the Executive Director hurled a dictionary at the VP of Public Relations’ head.

That day, I learned two valuable lessons:
1. Teams, like people, are unique so there is no standard playbook that always works
2. Remove heavy objects from meeting rooms

 

Principles behind the patterns

Over the past few weeks, you’ve learned why teams stall and the four attributes of successful teams. We also discussed why teams that appear to have the same struggles often need completely different solutions to be more effective.

This last point is especially important given our (my) tendency to go straight to fixing the things that aren’t working, like the delayed handoff in last week’s article. But what isn’t working is actually a seam, a symptom of weakness in one or more of the four attributes.

To fix what’s not working, we must diagnose the Interaction Pattern across the four attributes and the leans in the Think-Do and Individual-Team axes. That diagnosis is rooted in three key principles:

Every pattern is a dynamic, not a score. Two teams with the same number of strengths can behave very differently. That’s why you get an Interaction Pattern, not a score. The pattern names the behavior, so the next move is the right one for that specific team.

Severity before shape. If even a single attribute is Underdeveloped (red in the Diagnostic report), something needs to change quickly. Even if every other attribute is Emerging (yellow) or Established (green), a single underdeveloped attribute throws the team off-track.

Thinking before doing. If all the attributes are Emerging or Established, look at the lean. Most teams lean towards Doing (Core Skill Mastery and Single Process) but if you start doing before you’ve done the thinking, you’re just running faster in the wrong direction.

 

One seam. Three patterns. Three fixes.

Remember the teams from last week? Three teams each missed a deadline for handing off a project from R&D to manufacturing. One seam (delayed handoff) but three different patterns. This is how we made each one seamless.

Aligned but Stuck: “Everyone agrees on the plan. It just doesn’t happen.”
Every attribute was Established except Single Process. So, we built one. This is where the usual meetings, trackers, and RACI charts worked, but only because the team already shared a Collaborative Mindset and agreed on Shared Goals & Principles.

Quiet Misalignment: “Everyone’s working hard, just not toward the same thing.”
The people were skilled and collaborative (strong individual lean), but the team had no shared answer to what wins when priorities collide. R&D optimized for performance. Manufacturing optimized for cost.

We started by establishing Shared Goals & Principles, deciding together what wins when performance and cost collide. Then we put status meetings and dashboards in place.
Why that order? Without shared principles, a better process simply tracks each function’s pursuit of their own goals more closely.

Fragile Foundation: “Too many things need fixing at once.”
Everything except Core Skill Mastery needed attention. The instinct is to pick one thing you can do to improve and focus there. Put in place a process. Add more oversight. But fixing one thing doesn’t work when most everything needs attention.

So, we focused on strengthening the thinking attributes and agreed on Shared Goals & Principles and made a Collaborative Mindset non-negotiable. Then built the Single Process.

 

Find your pattern first. Then pick the fixes.

The seam tells you something isn’t working. The pattern tells you where to start.

There are ten patterns, representing 81 different combinations. No wonder following the “team effectiveness playbook” wasn’t straightforward (still not sure that throwing a dictionary was the right answer, though).

Curious? Take the free Seamless Innovation Diagnostic. When your team is ready to take it, hit Reply and we’ll help you get everyone in.

FAQs

What should a team fix first when work keeps stalling?

Start with what’s missing, not what hurts. A delayed handoff is a seam, a symptom that one or more of the four attributes need attention. Find the Interaction Pattern first. If any attribute is Underdeveloped, change it quickly even if the rest are Emerging or Established. If none is, do the thinking before the doing.

Why doesn't adding process fix a team working toward different goals?

Because without shared principles, a better process simply tracks each function’s pursuit of its own goals more closely. On one team, R&D optimized for performance and manufacturing optimized for cost. The first fix was establishing Shared Goals & Principles, deciding together what wins when performance and cost collide. Only then did status meetings and dashboards go in.

Stop Fixing the Team Problem You Can See

Stop Fixing the Team Problem You Can See

by | Oct 24, 2026 | Leadership, Seamless, Stories & Examples, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

The new product was supposed to move from R&D to manufacturing in March. By May, it was still in R&D.

It looked like a lack of coordination, so the team did what good teams do. They added a weekly handoff meeting to ensure regular communication. They built a tracker so everyone could see the status of the work. Someone made a RACI chart, and everyone signed off on it.

Six weeks later, the tracker is green, the meeting starts on time, and the product is still in R&D.

Why?

 

One seam, three patterns

I’ve seen this scenario play out at many clients. Teams first try to fix the process. If that doesn’t work, managers start swapping out people.

The team fixed what it could see. But what it saw was the seam, the stalled handoff. The cause sits underneath, in the four attributes we walked through last week.

The weekly meeting, the tracker, and the RACI all strengthen one attribute, Single Process. But attributes don’t act alone. They interact, so a seam that looks like a process problem may show up in one attribute when multiple others also need to be addressed.

I’ve run into the handoff seam over and over and always tried to solve it using meetings, Gantt charts, and RACIs. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn’t.

Then I used the Seamless Diagnostic and discovered why. The teams I was working with all showed the same seam but had different Interaction Patterns:

 

Aligned but Stuck: “Everyone agrees on the plan. It just doesn’t happen.”

This is where the usual bag of tricks worked. The team had strong Shared Goals & Principles, and each team member demonstrated a Collaborative Mindset and Core Skill Mastery. What they lacked was a Single Process and the meetings, schedules, and RACI gave them that.

 

Quiet Misalignment: “Everyone’s working hard, just not toward the same thing.”

People are skilled and collaborative, but the team has no shared answer to what wins when priorities collide. R&D optimizes for performance. Manufacturing optimizes for cost. The tracker makes the work visible, and the RACI makes ownership clear. But until we aligned on Shared Goals & Principles, everyone optimized for what was important to their function.

 

Fragile Foundation: “Too many things need fixing at once.”

Creating a Single Process is only one of several attributes that need attention. Strengthening it was real progress, but new seams kept appearing, and the team’s recurring problems didn’t stop until we established Shared Goals & Principles and made demonstrating a Collaborative Mindset non-negotiable.

 

Why you can’t fix recurring problems from where you sit

There’s another wrinkle in trying to diagnose and fix your team: you see it only from your perspective. The R&D lead sees a manufacturing team that won’t commit to dates. The plant manager sees designs that change every week. The finance partner sees a budget burning down. Everyone is right, and no one sees the whole picture.

The whole picture matters because what’s really going on comes from how all four attributes line up. A Collaborative Mindset that needs attention means one thing on a team with a strong Single Process. It means something entirely different on a team without one.

None of this is new. Each attribute rests on decades of research into what makes teams work, from Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety to studies showing that what individuals bring pays off only through how the team operates together. What Seamless adds is how the attributes interact. Those combinations, tested with real teams, form ten Interaction Patterns.

That’s why the whole team takes the Diagnostic. Each person’s view is one piece. Together, they reveal the pattern.

When you know the pattern, you know where to begin.

Next week, we’ll look at what to do first.

If you want a head start, take the free Seamless Innovation Diagnostic.

When your team is ready to take it, hit Reply and we’ll help you get everyone in.

FAQs

Why is a project still stuck after the team fixed the process?

Because the team fixed what it could see. A missed handoff gets a weekly meeting, a tracker, and a RACI. All three strengthen one attribute, Single Process. But the same handoff problem can come from very different Interaction Patterns underneath. If the real gap is Shared Goals & Principles or Collaborative Mindset, the tracker turns green and the product still doesn’t move.

How do you find what's really behind a team's recurring problems?

Have the whole team take the Seamless Innovation Diagnostic. Each person sees the team from one seat, and the cause comes from how all four attributes line up: Collaborative Mindset, Shared Goals & Principles, Core Skill Mastery, and Single Process. The Diagnostic looks at how those attributes interact, and the combinations form ten Interaction Patterns. Together, everyone’s answers reveal the pattern. Then you know where to begin.

Why the Fix That Worked for One Team Is Failing Another

Why the Fix That Worked for One Team Is Failing Another

by | Oct 20, 2026 | Leadership, Seamless, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

It’s Sunday night and you look at your calendar, steeling yourself for Monday.

The day opens with a meeting of your functional peers to review progress on quarterly and annual goals. It’s usually upbeat because everyone claims they’re on target or has a plan to get there.

Then there’s the cross-functional launch team meeting. Everyone agrees on the launch date, but timelines are starting to slip and there’s growing tension over which priorities to preserve and which to let slide.

After lunch is a one-on-one with a direct report. She’s a top performer, but you are worried that she’s burning out because she keeps doing her team’s work. She always saves the day, but you wonder how much longer this can last.

And sometime before you leave, you have to go talk to Legal about the contract you sent three weeks ago. Each week you ask for a status update, and each week the contract is being reviewed by someone new.

Four meetings. Four team dynamics. Four different approaches required to move forward.

 

One you.

Last week’s article explained why individual assessments like Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Hogan, Kolbe, and StrengthsFinder aren’t effective tools for improving team effectiveness. Each tool focuses on you and assumes that you show up in the same way in every context.

Teams have their own dynamics that result in people dialing up or down different parts of their personalities. In one team, someone may appear quieter and more thoughtful while in a different team the same person may be decisive and action-oriented. “It is,” as a client of mine likes to say, “contextual.”

Where the context breaks down, seams appear: the hidden points where decisions, handoffs, and incentives don’t line up, often between functions and levels.

 

Four attributes of successful teams

 Seamless Innovation uses that context to show which team dynamics drain progress and value. By examining the balance between Think and Do, and between Individual and Team, the framework creates a capability map of four attributes required for successful teams.

  • Collaborative Mindset (Individual/Think): How each person engages across boundaries like functions, age, tenure, and role. It shows up as curiosity, constructive challenge, and contributing beyond defined roles.
  • Shared Goals & Principles (Team/Think): The team’s shared understanding of priorities, measures of success, and how decisions are made.
  • Core Skill Mastery (Individual/Do): Each person’s skills, judgment, ownership, and discipline in getting the work done without the constant need for detailed direction.
  • Single Process (Team/Do): The team’s shared routines, decision pathways, handoffs, and feedback loops. It’s how everyone works together, regardless of what the org chart says, to get work done.

 

Four ways to succeed on Monday

Let’s go back to your Monday meetings. Each team has (at least) one attribute that needs attention.

  • Your functional peer meeting needs a stronger Collaborative Mindset because risks aren’t being raised. What’s a risk you might share for discussion to illustrate the benefit of curiosity and constructive challenge?
  • Your cross-functional team needs stronger Shared Goals & Principles because everyone agrees on the goal, but no one agrees on the trade-offs required to achieve it. How can you bring clarity to what wins when priorities collide?
  • Your direct report’s team relies on her Core Skill Mastery to save the project. But that means the project can only move as fast as one person. How might you help the rest of the team own more of the work?
  • The handoff to Legal needs a Single Process because it’s not clear who is doing what, when, and why. How might the process be transparently communicated and tracked?

But this is just the start. Next week we’ll dive deeper into how to tell which attributes your team needs to strengthen.

If you want a head start, take the free Seamless Innovation Diagnostic.

After all, there are many meetings and only one you.

FAQs

How do you get a cross-functional team to commit to a growth plan?

Look past the goal and check the trade-offs. A cross-functional team can agree on the goal and the launch date, then slip when priorities collide and no one agrees which to protect. That team needs stronger Shared Goals & Principles: a shared understanding of priorities, measures of success, and how decisions are made. Start by making clear what wins when priorities collide.

How do you fix accountability when no one owns a handoff?

Look at the process before you chase the people. When a contract sits for three weeks and someone new reviews it every week, it’s not clear who is doing what, when, and why. That team needs a stronger Single Process: shared routines, decision pathways, handoffs, and feedback loops that work regardless of the org chart. Make the process visible and track it.

How do you diagnose why one team moves and another doesn't?

Look at the team, not the individuals. People dial different parts of their personalities up or down depending on the team they’re in. The Seamless Innovation framework uses the Think–Do and Individual–Team axes to create a capability map of four attributes: Collaborative Mindset, Shared Goals & Principles, Core Skill Mastery, and Single Process. Each team has at least one that needs attention.

Why Teams Stall: It’s Not a People Problem

Why Teams Stall: It’s Not a People Problem

by | Oct 12, 2026 | Leadership, Seamless, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

The Zoom gallery started with just nine boxes. Nine people tasked with recommending how AI could be integrated into the product development process to save $5 million next fiscal year.

The next week, there were twelve boxes. Half the meeting was bringing new people up to speed. The rest was agreeing to last week’s next steps.

A month later, three screens were required to show everyone, but most were on mute with their cameras off. The team was still working through Week 1’s To Do list.

Three months later, it was up to five screens because, concerned about the lack of progress, team members’ bosses wanted to join the call.

Six months after starting, every idea had been rejected by someone. The only surviving idea was to build an enterprise-wide chatbot.

The project was handed over to IT. The team disbanded. Millions were spent creating a chatbot that no one used.

 

Sound familiar?

The team wasn’t incompetent, lazy, or quietly rebelling against AI. It was people (lots of people) attending meetings, reading and sending emails, and executing their tasks. There were handoffs with no clear owner, and decisions that stalled and no one could say why.

The owner-less handoffs, stalled decisions, and quiet deaths are the result of seams, the hidden disconnects between functions, levels, and processes. Seams derail progress more reliably than a skill gap because they’re easy to mistake as “just how things are.”

You’ve seen this before, so you try to fix it. You get more involved. You add a high-potential employee to the team. You change the scope or the timing. Sometimes it helps. Usually, it takes up more of your time and only slows the project’s decline.

 

It’s not a people problem

When a team stalls, we reach for Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Hogan, or Kolbe to diagnose the problem, drive self-awareness, and solve all the problems.

They don’t.

A team is not a collection of individuals, yet those tools focus only on the individual. They assume a person shows up the same way in every single situation. We don’t. We show up differently depending on the topic, who else is in the room, the time of day, even whether we’ve eaten or had enough caffeine. Stack those variables against a dozen people and eight functions and a consolidated report of personality types is simply a comforting fiction.

 

It’s a team problem.

A team is a group of people who trust each other and share a common purpose. Tools to understand individuals aren’t designed to diagnose teams. They aren’t designed to dig into the systems, relationships, and competing priorities that create seams. And that’s why they can’t solve them.

Seamless Innovation examines how the team works as individuals AND together, revealing how seams are slowing progress and impacting results. Created by Jared Simmons, founder of OUTLAST Consulting, from his lived experiences at companies like P&G and Coca-Cola. When I discovered it, it felt like finding the Rosetta Stone because it translated what I experienced into something practical and actionable. Over the past year, we’ve worked together to develop and test it with real people and teams.

Seamless looks at whether the team runs as individuals or an interdependent group with a common goal and at the balance between Think and Do. Think is how people engage across boundaries, and whether the group shares priorities, success measures, and tradeoff rules. Do is whether people can deliver without constant direction and whether the processes and permissions make work move.

Together, these two axes create a capability map of four attributes critical to team success: Collaborative Mindset, Shared Goals & Principles, Core Skill Mastery, and Single Process.

Next week we’ll look at each attribute, what it is, why it’s important, and what “good” looks like in the context of real-world experiences.

Because a team problem can’t be fixed with individual assessments.

Curious to learn more?  Click this link to take the Seamless Diagnostic. 

But remember, the results reflect your individual perspective. To experience the full benefit Seamless offers, you need the rest of your team to take it, too.  For that, just hit Reply and we’ll make that happen!

FAQs

What causes strategic decisions to stall inside a company?

Seams: the hidden disconnects between functions, levels, and processes. They show up as handoffs with no clear owner, decisions that stall with no one able to say why, and projects that die quietly. Meanwhile, everyone keeps attending meetings, sending emails, and executing their tasks. Seams derail progress more reliably than a skill gap because they’re easy to mistake for just how things are.

How do you get a project moving after it's been stuck for months?

Stop treating it as a people problem. The usual fixes are to get more involved, add a high-potential employee, or change the scope or timing. Usually, they take more of your time and only slow the decline. Personality tools like Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Hogan, and Kolbe focus on individuals, and we show up differently depending on the topic and who’s in the room. A stuck team needs a team-level diagnosis.

Is there a framework for diagnosing why a team stalls?

Yes. Seamless Innovation, created by Jared Simmons, founder of OUTLAST Consulting, examines how a team works as individuals and together. Two axes, Individual–Team and Think–Do, create a capability map of four attributes: Collaborative Mindset, Shared Goals & Principles, Core Skill Mastery, and Single Process. It measures the team, not the people.

Why Your Tools for Uncertainty are Coming Up Short

Why Your Tools for Uncertainty are Coming Up Short

by | Aug 24, 2026 | Leading Through Uncertainty, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

By now you (hopefully) know that uncertainty and ambiguity are different things caused by different combinations of knowns. But, as GI Joe taught every 80s kid, knowing is half the battle.

Doing is the other half.

 

 

Knowing about knowing

Whether it’s diagnosis, decision-making, or quantification, there are literally hundreds of different frameworks designed to manage uncertainty. With so many choices in breadth, depth, and application, choosing which one to use is an exercise in navigating uncertainty.

The Knowability Matrix (below) is rooted in the distinction that the US Army War College draws between uncertainty and ambiguity, specifically the knowability about the situation (question) and  solution (answer). It’s further supported by neurological studies into the brain’s chemical reactions to different states of not-knowing.

2x2 matrix with Clatiy of Question on Y-axis and Clarity of Answer on X-axis

Diagnosing the state of not-knowing you’re in is a critically important first step to “solving” the situation. Often referred to as “name it to tame it,” decades of psychological research on the theory is increasingly backed up by neurological studies that show that by simply naming or labeling a negative emotion (even silently) significantly reduces activity in the amygdala (our brain’s fight or flight center).

But that doesn’t change the actual situation.

 

 

Doing because of your knowing

To change the situation, you need to do something. And what you need to do varies by situation.

Risk

  • Knowing state: Question and answer are clear
  • Felt state: Tension, anticipation, caution
  • Tools for resolution: Expected value, probability and actuarial tables, Monte Carlo Simulation, Kelly Criterion, portfolio hedging and diversification, insurance, Value-at-Risk, Six Sigma
  • You might be a RISK expert if you are a: Professional poker player, casino operator, actuary, insurance and reinsurance underwriter, credit-risk officer, reliability engineer

Uncertainty

  • Knowing state: Question is clear, but answer is not
  • Felt state: Suspense and unease
  • Tools for resolution: Bayesian updating, scenario planning, portfolio/diversification of bets, experiments, calibrated forecasting, real options and hedging
  • You might be an UNCERTAINTY expert if you are a: Research scientist, intelligence analyst, meteorologist, epidemiologist, venture capitalist, clinical-trial researcher, detective

Ambiguity

  • Knowing state: Question is unclear, but answer becomes clear when question is determined
  • Felt state: Doubt and unease (especially when trying to clarify the question)
  • Tools for resolution: Problem framing (How might we?), abductive reasoning, prototyping-to-learn, Jobs to be Done, sensemaking,red team/devil’s advocate
  • You might be an AMBIGUITY expert if you are a: Founder or entrepreneur, strategist or design researcher, judge or appellate lawyer, diplomat or negotiator, therapist, anthropologist

Opacity

  • Knowing state: Both question and answer are unclear
  • Felt state: Disorientation or overwhelm
  • Tools for resolution: Impose structure (incident command, triage, checklists), shrink to the next move, OODA loop, act-sense-respond, rely on muscle memory/drilled pattern
  • You might be an OPACITY expert if you are a: First responder, incident commander, ER professional in a mass casualty event, war correspondent, wildfire and disaster response pro

 

The difficulty of doing

 As anyone who has ever struggled to lose weight, quit a bad habit, or start a healthy one knows, there’s a huge gap between knowing what you should do and actually doing it. This “Knowing-Doing Gap” isn’t just a reality individuals face when trying to change. It’s baked into how companies operate.

For centuries, businesses followed relatively predictable cycles. Sure, a war, depression, or radical technology popped up every now and then, but eventually everything settled back down.

As a result, companies got really good at managing Risk. They knew the questions and the answers so they could rely on actuarial and probability tables, Monte Carlo analyses, portfolios, hedging, and insurance to get them through uncertainty.

Now we live in an unpredictable world and risk management tools don’t work in Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Opacity. But, because they’re the tools we know, they’re the tools that get used.

Until we have the courage to let go of the familiar but wrong tool and learn the right one, the call to “embrace uncertainty” will continue to be as productive as hugging a cactus.

FAQs

Is knowing which state of uncertainty you're in enough to move forward?

No. Diagnosis tells you which tool to use. It doesn’t guarantee the organization uses it. Even with the right tool in hand, growth decisions can still stall on reasonable-looking resistance: one more signoff, a handoff with no owner, a priority that quietly shifts. 

Why do people use the wrong tools to solve problems?

Because those tools are what we know. For centuries, businesses built expertise in managing Risk (clear questions, clear answers) using tools like probability tables and hedging. Now most business problems are Uncertain, Ambiguous, or Opaque, where those same tools don’t work. But because they’re familiar, they still get used. Progress requires the courage to let go of the wrong-but-known tool for the right one.

Can a situation move from one state to another over time?

Yes. The four states aren’t fixed labels, they’re diagnoses of what’s still unknown right now. As problem framing, prototyping, or sensemaking clarify a fuzzy question, an Ambiguous situation often resolves into a clear Uncertainty or even a Risk problem. When that happens, the right toolkit changes with it. What worked for framing the question won’t work for hedging the answer.