Embracing uncertainty can improve innovation – and leadership
When the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux studied the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotions, he discovered an important truth: it can detect potential risk before the cortex – the rational, ‘thinking’ part of the brain – has time to analyze the situation. That’s why we might leap in fright when we encounter a harmless stick lying on the forest floor: the amygdala triggers a fear response. It is a stick. But it could have been a snake.
Our brains are hardwired to fear. Our propensity for alarm is derived from past experiences: the potential for loss; the proximity of danger. Yet the greatest leaders are those that have been able to overcome the fear of the unknown or the uncertain, and embrace the world as it evolves.
Consider the great explorer Ernest Shackleton. In October 1914, his crew of 27 men (and one cat) set sail from Buenos Aires to what was to be the final port of call for his ship Endurance – Grytviken, a hamlet on the island of South Georgia. From there, she began her doomed voyage to the Antarctic coast. The remarkable thing about the story is not that Endurance was crushed amid the ice – this was the age of exploration and maritime accidents were commonplace – but that Shackleton’s extraordinary leadership led all his men to survive.
Shackleton’s honesty about the risks involved, his willingness to accept them and – crucially – share in themfostered morale and team spirit. It advanced a crucial sense of followership: crewmen dubbed him “The Boss.” Amid the privations and peril, Shackleton and his crew innovated remarkably – camping on sea ice until it drifted close enough to a remote island to deploy lifeboats. Shackleton and five men then completed a daring voyage via open vessel to a whaling station on South Georgia to seek help – and eventual rescue.
In business, the conditions may appear less harsh, yet the taking of risk can save many more lives. The billionaire biotech entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw began her career by training as a brewmaster – a gamble given the pervading attitudes to women in brewing at the time. After spells working as a brewer in Australia, Mazumdar in the 1970s launched Biocon India from the garage in her house in Bengaluru, with just 10,000 rupees ($120) in seed capital.
Mazumdar’s youth and sex led to prejudices. Few trusted her ambitions. Recruitment was difficult – her first employee was a garage mechanic. Only a chance meeting with a financier led to her securing investment. India in the 1970s was a tough place to launch a biotech: access to clean water and uninterrupted power were daily challenges. Yet the experience was transformative. By taking on a project in such difficult conditions Mazumdar learned quickly about the need for – and opportunities in – affordable healthcare, accessible to populations in the less developed world. It is unlikely such life-changing innovation would have been achieved had she founded her business in a less hazardous environment. Like many sectors, pharmaceutical firms’ natural inclination is towards safety, not risk – secure,stable and scalable.
In his final book, The View from Ninety, the late, great business philosopher Charles Handy proposes that risk is imperative to invention, and thus business itself: without uncertainty, innovation would be unnecessary.
Handy was right. Fear is the key: a risky world is one ripe for discovery.
