The Uncertainty Mindset with Vaughn Tan

In this episode of the Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Emma Sinclair talk to Vaughn Tan. Vaugh is a consultant, author and professor of strategy at University College London School of Management. He studies innovation and adaptability in the context of uncertainty with a focus on processes for hiring, goal setting and motivation at the team level. 

References from the episode:

• The Uncertainty Mindset, Innovation Insights From The Frontiers of Food
•  Project on not-knowing
• idk
• What makes us human for now?

0.00 Introduction

3.29 At a party, how would you explain what you do?

5.09 You’ve spent long periods of time observing some of the world’s most famous chefs. How is uncertainty used strategically in that environment?

8.11 Organisations are built to de-risk, not to imagine or embrace uncertainty. What is your experience of how leaders in these organisations are starting to accept the need to embrace uncertainty and accept the need for imagination?

12.45 You identify the two categories of people who understand that there are forms of ‘not knowing that are not risk’. Do you think it’s possible to have a natural aptitude for not having to know?

14.59 Thinking about individuals who are at different ends of the scale for the need for closure and then putting them together as a team, what have you been learning about that environment mix?

21.06 Have you got a practical takeaway that you can give us around starting that loading that you can do with a team?

24.51 How do innovation teams motivate themselves to do uncomfortable, unfamiliar innovation work’. How do you take this idea of building a muscle of discomfort into innovation teams and what have you learnt from that?

28.59 What have you observed from the way that either individuals or teams get closer to the feelings of actually doing this? How do you make sense of the emotions that are linked to this sense of uncertainty and disruption?

35.20 You’ve said that anything that is fully knowable becomes routine and can be done by a machine. How does not knowing play into human value creation in a world of automation?

39.47 Can you give us your thoughts on what that might lead to in terms of jobs, role, new competencies that don’t currently exist in the workplace?

43.47 What are you working on at the moment? What’s next for you?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

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