Last week we discussed the difficulty of making technology decisions with imperfect information. This week we will discuss the challenges of making technology decisions during uncertain times.

Most leaders are also consumers who understand the impact of technology. What’s challenging for them is deciding what to do next for their organization when the ground keeps shifting.

In today’ VUCA environment, markets are constantly moving faster than planning cycles:

• Platforms change while projects are underway
• Assumptions often expire before budgets even do
• Decisions that once felt straightforward now carry second- and third-order effects that are hard to anticipate.

This makes technology decisions feel heavier than they used to, because the context around them is less stable.

In our opinion (and experience), in such uncertain conditions, the way leaders think about technology matters more than the specific choices they make. Here’s why.

Reason #1: Traditional decision frameworks may have fallen behind

Many technology decisions are still made using frameworks designed for steadier environments:

1. Define the target state. (“Current Situation” and “Desired Results”, along with a gap analysis.)
2. Compare options.
3. Reduce risk through analysis.
4. Commit once the path feels clear.

That approach assumes the environment will hold still long enough for the plan to play out. But for our long time readers, you know what we are going to say: in practice, it rarely does!

In today’s fast changing environment, by the time teams finish evaluating options, the inputs may already have changed. New constraints may have appeared and new dependencies may have surfaced. What looked optimal a few months ago now feels misaligned.

This creates frustration for everyone involved. Leaders feel hesitant to commit, while teams feel stalled waiting for direction. Everyone senses that more analysis will not resolve the uncertainty, but nobody wants to act without it.

Reason #2 Technology decisions now shape behavior and results, not just capability

Technology options have been democratized thanks to countless apps and personal plans, and your technology choices will influence how your team and customers will interact with your brand, not what your systems can do.

For example:

• A change in tooling affects who owns decisions.
• A security policy alters how quickly teams can act.
• An integration choice determines whether work flows or stalls between departments.
• A chatbot can help your customers find answers faster, or annoy them.
• Stalling (which is also a choice), may need to shadow IT, or customers leaving for competitors

Adjustment #1: Keep options open

Flexibility is an asset in an environment when outcomes are hard to predict.

Traditionally, leaders often feel pressured to optimize early, commit fully, and eliminate ambiguity. That instinct makes sense when conditions are stable. But when conditions keep changing, early optimization can become a liability.

Technology decisions that preserve room to adjust reduce the cost of being wrong. They allow teams to respond without unraveling large commitments and make it easier to adapt when assumptions no longer hold.

This does not necessarily mean avoiding decisions, but choosing structures that allow change without disruption.

One implication of this shift is that rigid service models has become a risk. Fixed scopes, long commitments, and narrowly defined roles assume a level of predictability that no longer exists. When priorities move, these structures resist adjustment.

Flexible operating models address this by design. Instead of locking effort into predefined outcomes, they allow leaders to reallocate capacity as conditions change. This way, leaders can change direction without renegotiating the system each time.

This is the logic behind FlexHours. It exists to preserve agility and flexibility. Capacity can move between IT, marketing, and development as needs evolve, without resetting contracts or rebuilding teams. In uncertain environments, that flexibility actually reduces risk rather than increasing it.

Adjustment #2: Iterating speed matters more than prediction accuracy

In uncertain environments, prediction accuracy declines, and iterating speed is the primary differentiator.

Systems that surface problems early allow leaders to respond while there is still time to act - even if they are just a prototype. Systems that hide issues behind reporting layers will ultimately delay response until the cost of change is higher.

Your choices will play a central role here. Some systems make feedback immediate and visible, while others defer it through process, dashboards, or approvals.

Leaders can benefit from asking a simple question when evaluating decisions: How quickly will this system tell us when it is not working?

Adjustment #3: Rethink how governance should work under uncertainty

Uncertainty puts pressure on governance models. Centralized control promises consistency but often introduces delay. Distributed decision-making increases speed but requires trust and clarity.

The answer is rarely one extreme or the other.

Effective leaders define decision boundaries clearly:

• Teams know where they can act and where alignment is required.
• Escalation paths exist, but they are not the default.
• Authority is placed close enough to the work that momentum is not lost.

Technology either supports this balance or undermines it. In a VUCA environment, systems that require constant approval slow response, while systems that clarify ownership enable responsible autonomy. So, make sure your governance model can provide the right balance.

Adjustment #4: Gain confidence from design, not foresight

In the past, leaders could wait for confidence before committing. In today’s uncertain conditions, that confidence rarely arrives.

What replaces it is confidence in the system itself. When leaders trust that their systems can absorb change, surface issues, and adapt without breaking, decisions feel less risky. Mistakes become manageable rather than catastrophic.

Technology decisions contribute to this confidence when they reduce hidden dependencies and improve visibility. They erode it when they add fragility or obscure how work actually flows.

And that’s why ongoing design is such an important component.

Adjustment #5: Ask questions about momentum and flexibility

In uncertain times, leaders can benefit from changing the questions they ask.

Instead of asking whether a decision is right, they should also consider how hard it would be to change later. Instead of optimizing for efficiency, they should also look at how quickly teams can learn and adjust. Instead of protecting plans, they should also protect momentum.

After all, whilst consistency and reliability are the old baselines are still important, flexibility and agility will be your differentiators.

Where this leaves leaders

Uncertainty is no longer something leaders can wait out. It is the environment decisions are made in.

In that environment, the most dangerous assumption is that more analysis will eventually create clarity. Often, it simply delays action while the context continues to shift.

Leaders who acknowledge this reality can stop chasing perfect information and start focusing on how their organizations absorb change, respond to new constraints, and continue moving even when conditions are unsettled.

At Smartt, we spend a lot of time helping teams think through technology decisions under exactly these conditions. If this way of framing uncertainty resonates with what you are seeing inside your organization, we are always open to a conversation.