Creative Confidence Podcast

Two thirds of leaders say they would rather be seen as decisive and get it wrong than appear uncertain and get it right. It may sound illogical, but it's actually the result of decades of organizational culture training leaders that decisiveness equals strength and that not knowing is a liability.In this episode, Mina Seetharaman talks with Sam Conniff, founder of Uncertainty Experts and author of The Uncertainty Toolkit, about the data behind what he calls the decisiveness crisis, why senior leadership teams are the most likely layer in most organizations to get uncertainty wrong, and three learnable questions that help leaders make better decisions without pretending to have answers they don't have.This is part of an ongoing series of conversations about uncertainty on the Creative Confidence Podcast. Subscribe to catch them all.Related Resources:The Uncertainty Toolkit: How to Feel Calmer, Happier, and More Confident in an Uncertain World, by Sam Conniff — https://www.uncertaintyexperts.com/the-uncertainty-toolkitSam Conniff on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/samconniffUncertainty Experts — https://www.uncertaintyexperts.comHow to Stop Fighting Uncertainty & Start Working With It (Simone Stolzoff episode) — https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/how-to-not-know-simone-stolzoffRead the blog recap — https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/the-decisiveness-crisis-uncertainty-toolkit-sam-conniffIn This Episode: (Timestamps are approximate due to ad breaks)(00:00) Sam on changing your relationship to uncertainty(01:09) Introducing Sam Conniff and the decisiveness crisis(02:08) What drew Sam to studying uncertainty and the personal story behind the research(05:14) The Q-test warm-up: a simple exercise that reveals how your brain handles uncertainty(10:36) The false brief: why trying to eliminate uncertainty is the wrong goal(11:24) The top five uncertainty safety behaviors at work and why they feel so familiar(13:27) Why the best leaders don't try to eliminate uncertainty—they navigate it(17:00) Fear, fog, and stasis: the three ways uncertainty shows up before it reaches the boardroom(20:58) What makes Sam and Catherine's research different from the books on your shelf(21:37) The data: 20,000+ participants, six years, three sources(24:41) Career is the number one uncertainty every year since 2021(26:15) The decisiveness question: a binary choice that reveals everything(29:04) Why two thirds of leaders choose the negative outcome(30:04) The hierarchy finding and where the numbers go off the scale(36:41) The decisiveness crisis as an identity problem and why transformation programs keep failing(39:00) The uncertainty-ready leader: knowing which mode to be in(40:00) Altitude, horizon, and agency: three questions that transform the pressure(43:36) Why setting a deadline is actually a decisive act(44:04) Turning a decision into a hypothesis(44:12) Obama and Ardern: what saying "I don't know" with authority actually looks like(46:59) The unlikely experts: what gang leaders, refugees, and recovering addicts know that most leaders don't(54:13) Lightning round: The Walking Dead, Catherine Templar Lewis, nail polish, and more(58:20) Mina's takeaways__________Get episode recaps and register for free live podcast events at ideou.com/podcast.Build your creative problem-solving skills with IDEO U's online courses in human-centered design, AI, leadership, and more at ideou.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We have more information than any generation in history. And we're more anxious about the future than ever. So what's going wrong?In this episode, Mina Seetharaman talks with Simone Stolzoff, journalist, author, TED speaker, and former IDEO Design Lead, about why certainty is so seductive, how our hunger for it quietly gets us into trouble, and what it actually looks like to build uncertainty tolerance as a skill.Simone's new book, How to Not Know, draws on years of reporting to examine the three certainty traps that hold leaders back—comfort, hubris, and control—and offers practical tools for anyone navigating hard decisions, unclear direction, or rapid change. Together, Mina and Simone explore why the most resilient leaders are the ones willing to say "I don't know," how to make decisions when the path isn't clear, and a concept called ghost ships that reframes what it means to choose.This is one of several conversations on uncertainty coming to the Creative Confidence Podcast this year. Subscribe to catch them all.Related Resources:How to Not Know, by Simone Stolzoff — https://simonestolzoff.com/how-to-not-knowSimone Stolzoff on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-stolzoff-5a16b648/ Simone’s Harvard Business Review article: Leaders, It’s Time to Build Your Tolerance for Uncertainty — https://hbr.org/2026/01/leaders-its-time-to-build-your-tolerance-for-uncertainty Read the blog recap — key ideas from this episode, plus five things to put into practice. ideou.com/blogs/inspiration IDEO U All-Access Pass — unlimited access to IDEO U’s on-demand courses. https://www.ideou.com/products/human-ai-leadership-self-paced-course Subscribe to the Creative Confidence Podcast — new episodes on creativity, leadership, and innovation every other week. ideou.com/pages/creative-confidence-podcast In This Episode: (Timestamps are approximate due to ad breaks)(00:00) Welcome and introducing Simone Stolzoff(03:21) From The Good Enough Job to How to Not Know — the thread between his two books(05:48) Why uncertainty feels like a threat — the biology behind it(09:37) Rowing through the fog — what Simone learned at IDEO(12:17) Why certainty has a narrowing effect on creativity(15:12) Commitment in spite of doubt — the Rollo May quote(16:19) The Slack origin story — how Stuart Butterfield trusted his uncertainty(18:20) Standing on a mountain peak — why you have to descend before you can go higher(18:42) The three certainty traps: comfort, hubris, and control(22:38) The AI prediction that aged poorly — Geoffrey Hinton and the radiologists(25:05) More information, more anxiety — why our phones aren't helping(30:17) The loss of friction — what we give up when we reach for our phones(34:09) How to actually build uncertainty tolerance(37:27) Microdosing the unknown — why small experiments rewire the brain(42:13) Busting the algorithm — the explore-exploit tradeoff explained(44:51) How to say "I don't know" without losing the room(45:40) What Brian Chesky did when Airbnb's entire business shut down overnight(49:11) Ghost ships and how to let go of the lives you didn't choose(54:03) The difference between one-way and two-way door decisions(56:32) What to do when you're in the middle of something genuinely hard(57:17) Lightning round(57:38) High Maintenance on HBO(58:30) Brian Eno on originality(59:02) Learning salsa dancing(59:32) The skill of asking questions(59:52) Leaving the Atlantic for IDEO — the mistake that wasn't(01:00:38) Always eat the cookie(01:01:40) Advice for a younger self__________Get episode recaps and register for free live podcast events at ideou.com/podcast.Build your creative problem-solving skills with IDEO U's online courses in human-centered design, AI, leadership, and more at ideou.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Angela Kochoska, Design Researcher and Data Scientist at IDEO and co-instructor in IDEO U's new course, Human-Centered Research with AI, joins Mina to answer your questions on how to responsibly and effectively use AI in the research process. After her co-instructor Hannah Rosenfeld’s episode on using AI in human-centered research, our audience had so many great questions. We dedicated an entire episode to answering them.How do you stop AI from flattening nuance? How do you know when you've outsourced your thinking instead of augmenting it? When does AI-assisted synthesis become a real insight, and when doesn't it? What does good prompting actually look like in a research context?Angela brings a perspective that's rare: she came to design research from a PhD in astrophysics and years building machine learning models for NASA and the European Space Agency. She knows how LLMs actually work, and she also knows why the conversation you have with your team in a coffee shop after a field interview still produces insights no model can replicate.If you haven't heard Hannah's episode yet, it's a great place to start. If you have, this is the conversation that goes deeper into the questions it raised.Angela teaches Human-Centered Research with AI alongside Hannah Rosenfeld at IDEO U. Find details and enroll at ideou.com.Related Resources: Angela Kochoska on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-kochoska/Hannah Rosenfeld's episode: https://shows.acast.com/creative-confidence-podcast/episodes/how-to-use-ai-for-more-human-centered-research-hannah-rosenfHuman-Centered Research with AI — IDEO U Course: https://www.ideou.com/products/human-centered-research-ai Read the episode recap on the IDEO U blog: https://www.ideou.com/blogIn This Episode: (Timestamps are approximate due to ad breaks)(02:07) From NASA sky surveys to design research — Angela's unlikely path to IDEO(06:57) What building the course with Hannah unlocked, including a new way to think about AI bias(13:18) Q&A: How do you tell a real insight apart from an AI-generated pattern?(16:11) Q&A: How do you stop AI from flattening nuance and overstating confidence?(22:37) Q&A: Is it self-serving to say AI makes humans more important? How to address the skepticism(26:09) Q&A: How do you know when you've crossed into outsourcing your thinking to AI?(32:12) Q&A: What does good prompting actually look like in a research context?(34:35) Q&A: How do you move from AI-generated insights to meaningful human-centered decisions?(44:51) Q&A: What AI tools do you actually use? (Claude, Perplexity, NotebookLM, SciSpace)(51:41) Q&A: How do you protect the depth and specificity that makes your research valuable?(57:07) Q&A: My organization is skeptical of AI — how do I show its value?(1:03:30) Lightning round: Angela recommends Always Coming Home, James Bridle, crochet, "Don't forget to look up,” and more.__________Get episode recaps and register for free live podcast events at ideou.com/podcast.Build your creative problem-solving skills with IDEO U's online courses in human-centered design, AI, leadership, and more at ideou.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI is changing what it means to be a researcher. But most teams are only using it one way—to go faster. In this episode, Hannah Rosenfeld, Executive Design Researcher at IDEO, shares a framework for using AI intentionally across your research process: not just to move faster, but to see more, ask bigger questions, and do things you couldn't do before.Hannah teaches these ideas and more in IDEO U's new course, Human-Centered Research with AI. If this conversation resonates, the course is where you can go deeper and apply the framework to your own work. The first cohort starts May 21 at ideou.com.Related Resources:Hannah Rosenfeld on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-rosenfeld-86805940/Human-Centered Research with AI — IDEO U Course: https://www.ideou.com/products/human-centered-research-aiRead the episode recap on the IDEO U blog: https://www.ideou.com/blogIn This Episode: (Timestamps are approximate due to ad breaks)(02:16) AI Doesn't Change the Principles of Good Research — It Expands the Definition(05:04) A Framework for Using AI in Research: The Intersection of Speed and Scale(09:28) Mode 1: Widen Your Aperture — Use AI to Take In More(13:01) Mode 2: Notice Nuance — Use AI to See Deeper, Not Just Wider(19:49) Why Bias Isn't the Problem — Unexamined Bias Is(21:23) Mode 3: Challenge Your Assumptions — Use AI to Interrogate Your Thinking(27:50) The Case for Productive Friction — Why Speed Can Work Against You(29:54) Mode 4: Immerse Yourself in Data — Use AI to Bring Your Thinking to Life(32:41) Building a Living Research Brain Your Team Can Query for Months(38:00) How to Sum Up the Framework: Strategic Use Cases, Not Just Efficient Ones(40:53) The Skills AI Can't Replace: Why Human Judgment Matters More, Not Less(43:10) Q&A: Moving from AI-Generated Patterns to Human-Centered Decisions(43:50) Q&A: Can AI Turn a Non-Researcher into a Serious Researcher?(45:14) Lightning Round: Hannah on Asking Better Questions, Fewer Things, and Perpetual Stew__________Get episode recaps and register for free live podcast events at ideou.com/podcast.Build your creative problem-solving skills with IDEO U's online courses in human-centered design, AI, leadership, and more at ideou.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.