Craving Certainty? Be Careful What You Wish For

If you want to know about the risks of certainty, look no further than the Cavendish banana.

The bananas I have in my fruit bowl are Cavendish bananas. I know this because all bananas you find in supermarkets in the West are Cavendish bananas.

One of the amazing features of this type of banana is that it has no seeds. So how does it reproduce? The short answer is: it doesn't. All Cavendish banana plants are clones, meaning that they are all genetically identical. Any differences in their appearance are due to environmental factors in how they were grown or delivered to you. 

Being genetically identical gives these bananas enormous predictability. Growers can be certain exactly what is needed for the plants to grow, and the fruit have incredible consistency in terms of taste, texture, ripening times and shelf life.

Sounds great for business, right?

The quality that makes the Cavendish banana so wonderfully certain is the same one that also makes it incredibly vulnerable to existential threat. Because any pest or disease that figures out how to attack one plant, can attack all the plants.

If you don't believe me, just ask the Cavendish's predecessor, the Gros Michel. Until the 1950s, everything I've said about the Cavendish could be said about the Gros Michel. It was the most popular export banana in the world until it was wiped out by Panama disease.

It's taken 70 years, but now Panama disease has figured out how to pick the lock of the Cavendish immune system, and scientists are trying to figure out what to do about it.

The Cavendish is heading the same way as the Gros Michel, a victim of its own certainty.

During times of great uncertainty, business leaders may yearn for more stable times. And understandably so. Successful businesses are built on successful plans, and few people pay for chaos. 

Yet certainty comes with its own price. Certainty makes us complacent, psychologically weak and flabby.

That's probably why we're suffering from uncertainty now.

Relatively speaking, the 2010s was a pretty chilled out decade. There was no oil shock, tearing down of the Berlin Wall, rise of the internet, major terrorist attack or global financial meltdown.

Yet since the turn of the decade we've had a global pandemic, a very hot war in Europe and the rise of artificial intelligence.

If we'd indulged in certainty for the previous decade, we're certainly hardening to uncertainty now.

Uncertainty might make us feel uncomfortable, but we should also welcome it. Uncertainty forces us to exercise the creative muscles of our imaginations. It makes us stronger.

And if that doesn't make you feel better, think of this: Everything is cyclical. After periods of uncertainty, there are periods of certainty. And we shouldn't get too used to uncertainty either. 

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