Martin Lewis, the UK’s most trusted ‘money man’ has to put out videos disavowing social media ad scams as a fake AI-generated video is arguably found to be more believable than the real Martin Lewis. (link)
If that doesn’t unsettle you, I don’t know what does.
I think the most unsettling part is not the scams or the technology.
It’s a quiet realisation that cues we’ve relied on for years, like a trusted face and a familiar voice are no longer reliable signals of truth.
This is beyond uncertainty. This is ambiguity on steroids.
Uncertainty is when you don’t know what will happen next. Ambiguity is more destabilising. It’s when you’re no longer sure how to interpret what’s in front of you.
I think the result is a gnawing sense that things no longer quite add up.
When ambiguity rises, one common reaction is to push for speed, certainty, and answers. The risk is that can make things worse. Ambiguity isn’t solved by running faster, its navigated by better sense-making.
Leadership is crucial at times like this.
Big, bold leadership in ambiguous times isn’t about pretending to know. It’s about slowing conversations down just enough for people to separate fact from reality.
As you’ll see in the Harvard Research below, the human animal in a stress response situation doesn’t make the best decisions.
I remember this first hand in the middle of the Pacific Ocean having power failure when we were hundreds of miles from land.
The wrong answer was to race at a solution in an emotionally charged state.
The right answer was to pause, to breathe, to look at all our options and to make rational choices in the landscape we were in.
As it is in a world of ambiguity.
Pause, slow down. Get your best rational take on what is true and what you don’t know. Make a choice and iterate forward with small experiments and tests.
This used to be the default advice for dealing with high pressure situations.
I think this approach could most helpfully be used as the default for navigating our highly ambiguous world.
The Science Behind the Big Idea 🧑🔬
Research into ambiguity shows that when information is incomplete or contradictory, the human brain doesn’t simply process data. It reacts.
Ambiguity triggers a biological response first, not a rational one. Heart rate increases. Attention narrows. The nervous system looks for certainty, familiarity, and safety before it looks for truth. This is why, in ambiguous conditions, confident stories can feel more convincing than accurate ones.
The science suggests the advantage doesn’t come from suppressing that response, but from recognising it. Humans are uniquely capable of noticing their own reactions, pausing, and making sense together.
When leaders create space to slow interpretation, name uncertainty, and explore what’s really happening, the nervous system settles. Curiosity replaces defensiveness. Learning becomes possible. In ambiguity, our humanity isn’t the problem, it’s the capability.
Use Design Thinking to Navigate Ambiguity - October 2025 - https://hbr.org/2025/10/use-design-thinking-to-navigate-ambiguity
Three Experiments for you to Try 🧪
Here’s three small experiments to play with based on this article:
🔍 The 2-Minute Experiment
Think of a moment recently where something felt confident or convincing> perhaps a decision, a message, a story that you later realised you didn’t fully understand it.
Ask yourself: “What made this feel reassuring at the time?”
Was it familiarity? Authority? Confidence?
Start noticing when emotional certainty is doing the work of cold hard logic.
🧠 The 5-Minute Experiment
Take a situation you’re currently navigating that feels unclear or slightly uncomfortable.
Spend five minutes writing down:
what you know
what you don’t know
and what you might be assuming
You’re not trying to resolve it. You’re creating separation between facts, feelings, and guesses.
🧭 The 1 Hour Experiment
Set aside an hour aside and watch Daniel Kahneman’s talk at Google on Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0
As you watch, notice this:
how often “fast thinking” jumps in to create a feeling of certainty before the facts are clear.
When it finishes, take the remaining few minutes and answer just one question:
Where in my work or life am I mistaking confidence or familiarity for clarity?
You’re not looking for a solution. It’s about the skill to spot moments when your biology gets there before your reasoning does. Awareness like this changes how you navigate ambiguity.
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