The Addiction to Certainty is Hurting Your Organization

Let me preface this article: habits and certainty are not bad things. The ability to form habits and the desire for certainty has allowed humanity to survive and thrive across millennia. From seeking shelter when the sun sets to fortifying cities for protection to dividing labor for optimized productivity, our desire for certainty can almost be tied to our desire for survival. Because we know that when something has been tried and tested by someone else, it is less likely to fail when we try to replicate it.

Now, certainty is also different from predictability. Predictability provides comfort through a higher likelihood of success, while certainty seeks guarantees of success.

While the desire for certainty has allowed organizations to thrive to an extent, it is tough to ignore the age of disruption we are living through. When, arguably, the only constant thing is change (and has been that way for a while). In this age of disruption, the yearning for certainty can hurt your organization and talent more than you think. After all, what got us here will not likely get us into the future, and all the tried and tested solutions we have in our HR arsenal may be different from the ones we need going forward.

Here are the five areas where I have seen the desire for certainty can hurt more than help organizations:

Years of Experience Requirements

This is a familiar one HR practitioners have been talking about for ages. Does years of experience reflect the skillsets and mastery needed for the role? Or is it just something that provides psychological comfort to managers and the hiring team? The need for certainty here could be costing you more in talent acquisition and cost of labor and possibly hurting your DEI metrics (especially in disciplines where historical imbalances exist).

Performance Management Ratings

I have always found performance management to be an exciting topic. I’ve yet to come across someone who claims that they have nailed it 100% or that annual performance cycles are the optimal choice for their organization. Yet, for some reason, most of us are still rolling with the yearly rating process where we categorize someone’s entire year’s worth of work into simple terms such as “Achieved,” “Exceeded,” or “Excelled.” Are we categorizing because these words indicate the potential your workforce can achieve, or are we just categorizing because our minds find comfort in order and categories? How do you know you are not missing out on talent potential through single-word categorizations?

Benchmarking Data

Benchmarking is a race to mediocrity. Having completed too many benchmark surveys than I’d like to admit, I will be the first to say that benchmarking doesn’t work because the numbers do not show you the context in which they were achieved. Leading organizations could have a 1:45 HR FTE ratio, but nowhere will it clarify the process automation they may use, the standardization of workforce types and associated knowledge content, etc. Think back to the last time you used benchmark data. Were you genuinely trying to understand what the rest of the market was doing (the intent of benchmarking), or were you trying to convince someone in your organization of the certainty in your recommendations (because “everyone else is doing it”)?

Job Pricing

This one may ruffle some feathers, but I had to include it because I don’t think we are having enough conversations about how jobs are priced and compensation is determined. Every compensation professional will tell you that job pricing combines art and science. I agree with that because when done right, you are relying on your comp person's expertise to distinguish how much a role would cost in the current market. The challenge comes when the interpretation of desired experience and KSAs for the role differs by person. What one person defines as “strong communication skills” is different than another. So, for certainty, we mostly default to pricing by job titles. A Director is priced higher than a Senior Manager in the same function, for example. However, in the age of disruption, how certain can we be that the skill sets required for one title genuinely deserve more than those needed for another? When AI generates and corrects content regularly, are communication skills worth the same today as they were a few years ago?

Caregivers & Working Moms

This one grinds my gears, and I can probably write a whole article series on working moms in the workplace (and why I have said things like, “OMG, I will quit this thing as soon as I start family planning” in the past). We have all heard horror stories about the maternity/family penalty women take in the workplace. I am convinced that at least part of it is driven by organizations’ desires and addiction to certainty. The certainty of having employees be available during sure hours; the certainty of taking x amount of time to do y tasks (so a 6-week mat leave will harm one’s annual output, right?); and the certainty of having the same person show up to all the meetings because god forbid we send someone else in our place for coverage. Is this addiction and desire for certainty helping organizations find and retain the best talent? I am certainly holding my breath on that one.

All in all, if you have ever said, “I need to be more innovative/creative” in your personal or professional lives, I would encourage you to take a quick pause the next time you are about to act on something. Then, ask yourself: Am I doing this because it provides a guaranteed outcome? Am I interested in having that outcome, or is it just habitual? If you are not interested in the outcome of your actions, then why are you doing it? Maybe it’s time to try something different.