Working with uncertainty: a conversation on evidence-based management

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Working with evidence-based management can be uncomfortable. It asks people to sit with uncertainty rather than reach for certainty — something many of us are rewarded for in organisational life.

This conversation explores what that discomfort looks like in practice, and how uncertainty shows up when people engage seriously with evidence — whether they are managers making decisions, students learning to apply evidence, or educators supporting that learning. The discussion ranges across research, teaching, and organisational decision-making, touching on credibility, confidence, risk, and the realities of working with evidence in complex, high-stakes environments.

Rather than offering tools or prescriptions, the episode stays with the experience of uncertainty itself — including where it becomes personally or professionally risky, and where it can open up better questions, more careful judgement, and new possibilities when people are willing to stay with it.

This is not a “how-to” episode. It’s an opportunity to listen in as experienced educators and practitioners think together about uncertainty, without rushing to certainty.

Host:
Karen Plum

Guests:

• Eric Barends - Managing Director, Center of Evidence-Based Management
• Denise Rousseau, H J Heinz University Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, USA
• Preston Davis, Clinical Assistant Professor of Management, Coles College, Kennesaw  State University, Atlanta,  Georgia, USA

Contact:

Eric Barends, Managing Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Management