IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY, WHAT CAN YOU CONTOL?

If I were to choose one word five months into 2026, that word is uncertainty.

The U.S. is navigating war, immigration policy changes and labor uncertainty, tariffs, funding instability, economic pressure, rising costs for healthcare, food, energy and transportation, the use of AI, and deepening social division.

It’s a lot.

For individuals and organizations, periods like this require us to think carefully about three categories:

• What is within our direct control?

• What can we influence, even if we do not control the outcome?

• And what must we acknowledge is outside our control altogether?

If we do not consider these questions, we run the danger of exhausting ourselves trying to control conditions we have no ability to control, while overlooking the areas where our actions genuinely matter.

Pay Attention to What Has Your Attention

Here is a simple exercise to help you get clear on where you should focus.

What currently has your attention?

•          Which of these contribute to your sense of well-being?

•          Which of these add stress?

•          Which of these are within your direct control?

•          Which of these can you influence?

•          Which of these are outside your control altogether?

For the things within your control, the goal is to strengthen your response, your preparation, your priorities, and your habits.

For the things you can influence, the goal is contribution. You may not control the final outcome, but your preparation, perspective, communication, and actions can still shape how people think, respond, and move forward.

Your boss may make the final decision. A customer may choose a different direction. A community issue may not be resolved immediately. Even so, thoughtful input and responsible action still matter.

And then there are situations, such as natural disasters or geopolitical conflict, where we may have little ability to influence the immediate condition itself. Even there, we still retain some control over our response and preparation, like having an earthquake kit in your car and home.

Leaders Navigate Uncertainty on Multiple Levels

Leaders face the same external conditions everyone else does. They must also assess what those conditions mean for the organization on a variety of levels — operationally, strategically, financially, culturally — and understand how that organizational reality is landing on the people responsible for executing the work.

AI, Overload, and Organizational Strain

This assessment becomes especially important as organizations continue integrating AI into the workplace.

A leader may look at an overwhelmed workforce and conclude that this is the perfect moment to introduce AI to reduce workload.

Effective AI depends on human oversight, and the people providing that oversight must have time for:

•          critical thinking

•          verification

•          contextual judgment

•          reflection

•          prioritization

•          ethical considerations

All of those capacities require time and tend to weaken under chronic stress, excessive workload, and constant pressure, making overload one of the worst conditions for responsible AI use.

When people are overwhelmed, the temptation increases to accept the first answer, skip validation, rely on summaries instead of deeper understanding, or use AI to move faster without fully thinking through the implications.

The Use of AI Can Amplify Organizational Strain, Not Relieve It

In a recent Harvard Business Review IdeaCast episode, “The Hidden Causes of AI Workslop—and How to Fix Them,” Kate Niederhoffer, chief scientist at BetterUp, and Jeff Hancock, professor of communication at Stanford, discuss the rise of what they called “AI work slop,” low-quality work produced when employees rely heavily on AI outputs without sufficient verification, reflection, or original thinking.

Hancock and Niederhoffer are direct that “workslop” is often a symptom of organizational conditions, including general AI mandates and pressure to do more work because AI tools are available.

If the underlying conditions of the organization remain unclear priorities, unrealistic workloads, constant urgency, fragmented communication, and insufficient capacity, AI may accelerate the symptoms without resolving the causes.

The inverse is also true. When priorities are clear, workloads are realistic, and capacity exists, people can bring the judgment and care that responsible AI use requires.

THE ALIGN Method

In times of uncertainty, the ALIGN Method can help organizations navigate complexity without overwhelming the people inside them.

ABSORB: Understand Current Reality

The ALIGN method begins with ABSORB. Before leaders can set priorities or introduce change, they need an honest picture of current reality — not just operationally, but humanly. That requires asking specific questions and listening deeply, without judgment.

Leaders take in both the concrete information being shared and the emotions accompanying it. They pay attention to what people are experiencing, what pressures they are carrying, what concerns are surfacing repeatedly, and where capacity may already be strained.

Listening to a variety of perspectives helps leadership better understand both operational reality and the organization’s tolerance for change. There is often an inverse relationship between stress and tolerance for change. As stress rises, people generally have less capacity for additional uncertainty, ambiguity, or disruption.

If employees are already carrying significant pressure from conditions outside the organization’s control, leaders should carefully examine what can realistically be absorbed before introducing large amounts of additional change internally.

LEGITIMIZE: Set Priorities Responsibly

Before leaders can set organizational priorities, they have to reckon with what they are carrying. Leaders are not personally above the uncertainty. They face the same external pressures as everyone else, carry additional pressures that come with the role, and are still responsible for understanding and responding to what their people are experiencing.

After listening to stakeholders, leaders need to make sense of the information that was gathered and determine the priorities for the organization to focus on. By identifying priorities, leadership has assessed what can realistically be carried forward without overwhelming the people responsible for execution.

INTEGRATE: Translate Priorities Into Operations

Priorities handed down from above don’t always account for how work actually gets done. INTEGRATE is where that gap surfaces. By involving the people most impacted by the work, leadership gains an honest picture of what execution actually requires — including the workarounds, constraints, and realities that never make it into a strategy document.

Communication remains essential during this phase. Employees need space to identify conflicts, surface unintended consequences, and help leadership understand what the work actually requires in practice.

GROW: Build Capacity and Capability

There is a story from Mencius, a Chinese philosopher, of a farmer who wanted his crops to grow faster, so he pulled the seedlings upward to help them along. Shortly after, they were all dead.

The impulse to accelerate is understandable. It is part of why organizations reach for AI.

However growth cannot be forced.

In ALIGN, GROW is the phase where the organization builds the capability and capacity required to support the work through learning, coaching, communication, skill building, and ongoing support.

This phase requires leaders to pay attention to burnout, overload, and unrealistic implementation timelines. When people need new skills, they also need time to internalize new thought patterns as well as time to practice in order to apply those skills effectively.

NURTURE: Stay Responsive as Conditions Evolve

NURTURE is the discipline of leadership maintaining focus long enough for the work to take root, mature, and produce the intended results. Organizations can unintentionally undermine progress by constantly pulling people toward the next priority before the current one has been sufficiently integrated into the way the organization actually operates. It is similar to pulling up seedlings to check whether they are growing.

When people are repeatedly shifted from one initiative to another before achieving real gains, confidence, or competency, disengagement often follows because the effort never produces a meaningful payoff.

On day one, leadership establishes priorities based on the best information available at the time. By day 472, the conditions surrounding the organization may look very different. What an organization understands at six months will often deepen substantially by eighteen or twenty-four months as people gain experience, identify operational realities, strengthen capability, and learn what is actually sustainable in practice.

NURTURE requires leadership to allow space for that maturation process through iteration, learning, adjustment, and continued attention over time.

That does not mean organizations should continue indefinitely with approaches that clearly are not working. If the information consistently indicates that something is ineffective, misaligned, or unsustainable, leaders may need to change direction. But abandoning efforts simply because the first attempts did not immediately produce the desired outcome is rarely realistic and often creates unnecessary organizational fatigue, cynicism, and loss of trust.

Alignment Requires Ongoing Stewardship

Alignment requires continued attention, recalibration, listening, and stewardship.

In periods of uncertainty, it is all too easy for individuals and organizations to exhaust energy trying to control conditions they cannot control.

Leaders who apply ALIGN are better positioned to determine what is within the organization’s control, what can be influenced through thoughtful action, and where energy and attention are best directed.

That clarity helps people better understand what is being asked of them, why priorities matter, and how the work connects to the broader reality surrounding the organization.

In times of uncertainty, leadership matters most when it helps people navigate changing conditions with greater clarity, steadiness, and realistic expectations about what can sustainably be carried forward over time.

For organizations ready to assess their readiness, the AI Implementation Checklistoffers a structured starting point. [link]