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This Might Not Work – A Manifesto For Modern Builders

“I’m not sure.”

How often have I said this to myself?
How often have I said it out loud?

Not being sure is the place where I live.

Am I right about the concept of “vibe content” (not sure… and the LinkedIn comments provide no additional guidance).
There’s a strange kind of panic that sets in when you’re not 100% sure what you’re doing.
Not clueless… just uncertain… unsteady.

I remember showing ThinkersOne to a very prominent Thinker, and they didn’t see the value.

I reiterated back to them that they might be right.
This might not work… we’re not sure.
That this is the job of an entrepreneur to potentially… maybe… be right.
It’s like walking through fog but everyone else seems to have a map you didn’t get.

It happens to me more than I care to admit… mid-project… mid-decision… mid-conversation… mid-night.

But something Vicki Tan said in our conversation stuck with me…
She believes the best ideas come from that place… the not-sure place.
Not being sure isn’t a weakness… it’s a signal.
It’s the sound of something real taking shape… a form of tension… of ambiguity… of the space between what we know and what we’re about to discover… or create.

Business culture has fetishized certainty.

Make the plan… stick to the plan… move fast… correct course and don’t look back.
But the most meaningful work (the most honest ideas) don’t arrive in a flash of certainty.
They emerge slowly… they simmer… they detour.
They show up as fragments, doubts, scribbles and half-sentences you almost didn’t write down (or share in spaces like this).
And still… most of us apologize for them (I might be doing that right now).

We soften our language… we bury the unpolished stuff…

We try to sound thoughtful when maybe we should just be thinking… out loud… in the open.
It’s not easy to do.
Don’t believe me (scroll through the comments… it takes thick skin).

I’ve been sitting with this question all week:

What if not being sure is the point?
What if that friction you’re feeling (that hesitation to think out loud) isn’t a failure of clarity, but the very condition that makes clarity future-possible?

I needed that reminder… maybe you did too?

(Vicki’s a brilliant designer and Thinker. We talked about her book, Ask This Book A Question, on this week’s episode of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast).

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.