Here’s how weird your brain is…
Imagine two buckets, each filled with 100 beads.
The first one has exactly 50 red and 50 black beads.
The second also has 100 beads, but you don’t know the mix. It could be 50 red and 50 black. Could be 92 red and 8 black. It could be anything.
I will pick a bead from a bucket. If it’s the color you choose, you win $1m.
Here’s the challenge:
First, pick a color: red or black.
Next, pick a bucket: the 50/50 or the unknown mix.
So which bucket do you choose?
If you’re like most people, you picked the first bucket - the one with the 50/50 split. Am I right?
Even though the other bucket might give you better odds, you chose the first bucket because you know those odds are certain.
That actually makes sense. I get your choice.
But here’s where it gets weird.
If you change your choice of bead color, you’ll still pick the bucket with the 50/50 chance.
In case you’re not following along, this means that you think the unknown bucket has too few red beads AND too few black beads - which defies all senses of logic.
But your brain apparently doesn’t care about that - because your brain is designed to choose clarity over uncertainty, even if it isn’t logical.
That’s called the Ellsberg Paradox - and it’s an unconscious pattern your brain repeats every day.
You’re Doing It Right Now
Let me give you a real world example that I see all the time in my executive coaching work.
Let’s say you’ve got an important project that needs to get done - and get done well.
You don’t want to delegate it to your team because you don’t think they can do a good job. They’re just not experienced enough.
But you can’t bring on a consultant to help because they don’t know the intricacies of the business.
That’s quite a predicament you have.
So you keep doing everything yourself.
Suddenly you’re working 60 hour weeks and continually complaining about being overwhelmed. But, hey, at least your projects are done the way you want them, right?
You’ll go to your grave defending your decision because you’re doing what’s best for the company.
Or so you’ve convinced yourself.
What you’re actually doing is rejecting every option that includes uncertainty.
Which happens to be every option.
You’re doing the same damn thing you did with the buckets and beads - ignoring ambiguity because you’re scared the odds could be against you.
Which doesn’t make any logical sense. But I never said you were logical.
What This Actually Looks Like
I worked with a CEO last year - let’s call him David, because that’s my dad’s name and we all know my father wasn’t my client.
It was important that David hire a head of sales, but he was having trouble filling the role.
Nobody internally was “ready for the role,” and every external candidate “didn’t understand the business or have the right contacts.”
So the role stayed empty.
For two years.
David took on the sales job himself. But he wasn’t a sales person.
He continued to tell everyone how badly the company needed someone to lead sales. But he wasn’t really looking for a sales person, he was looking for certainty.
And since none of the options had certainty, he decided to not decide. Which is the worst decision.
By the time I talked with David, the opportunity cost of his decision was in the millions of dollars.
That’s the Ellsberg Paradox.
You’d rather live with an outcome that you know is bad, than risk an outcome you don’t know - even though it might actually be better.
The Pattern You’ve Created
When faced with uncertainty, you will choose the predictable option - even if the predictable option is bad.
You will keep the underperforming employee for too long instead of taking the risk in hiring someone new.
You will do all the work yourself because you know the quality, rather than delegate and not know what will be created.
You will stay in the relationship even though you’re not happy, rather than face the uncertain risk of being single.
Every time you do this your brain thinks you’re protecting yourself. You think you’re playing it safe.
Except you’re not safe.
You’re just failing in a very predictable way.
And here’s where it gets worse:
If you maintain a pattern of always choosing predictable outcomes, you’ll create an environment where any risk feels dangerous.
That environment will reinforce your pattern of avoiding uncertainty. Which strengthens the risk-averse environment. And on and on it goes in an endless Pattern-Environment Loop.
Eventually, you could get stuck in a life where everything outside your comfort zone feels dangerous. And eventually you’ll just stop trying.
And that’s when your A players will leave. That’s when you’ll wonder why life has become so difficult.
It’s because of you.
What You’re Actually Protecting
When you do this, you honestly believe you’re doing what’s best. But the only thing you’re really doing is trying to protect your identity.
Because if you promote someone and they fail, that says something about your judgment.
And if you delegate the work and it isn’t perfect, that says something about your standards.
And if you end the relationship and it doesn’t work out, that says something about your worth.
The risk isn’t that the decision might be wrong.
The risk is that you might be wrong.
The Decision You Keep Not Making
Look at the decisions you’ve been avoiding - and the ones you’ve made with the results you don’t like.
Are you rejecting the other options because they are too uncertain - even though the status quo kinda sucks?
If you think you’re being careful by doing that, you’re wrong. All you’re doing is trying to protect your identity by destroying your sanity.
You’re choosing the thing that’s familiar simply because it’s predictable.
But you have to remember, the devil you know is still a devil.
And continually picking the same bucket for both colors doesn’t make you careful. It makes you stuck.
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If you want to see which patterns are running your decisions, that’s exactly what the free Leadership Diagnostic Workshop is for.
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P.S. The decision you keep finding reasons to delay? That’s the Ellsberg Paradox doing exactly what it’s designed to do. Don’t let it win.
Interesting framing.
What strikes me is not just the avoidance of uncertainty, but how difficult it is to act in situations where both the information and the consequences are inherently unclear.
In practice, it’s rarely a question of choosing between a known and an unknown option, but of navigating ambiguity where neither the probabilities nor the outcomes are well understood.
That seems to be where many leaders get stuck, not simply because of bias, but because the situation itself resists clarity.
This makes a lot of sense and is truly relatable for me. “The risk isn’t that the decision might be wrong. The risk is that you might be wrong.” It’s interesting how often we mistake avoiding uncertainty for making a safe decision. Sometimes, staying with what we already know can actually be the riskier choice.
Staying where we’re comfortable can keep us stuck, and the longer we stay there, the harder it can become to try something new. I’ll keep reminding myself that I’ll never know what’s possible if I never take the chance to try.