At SDA Bocconi’s first Executive Education Forum, findings from a survey conducted by the School show where organizations’ ability to handle uncertainty is being decided today: adaptive leadership, decision quality, collaboration, and AI governance.

Uncertainty has become part of everyday organizational life. Business models are shifting, pressure on productivity and costs is mounting, people’s expectations are evolving, and decisions increasingly have to be made with incomplete information.

This was the backdrop for the first Executive Education Forum, “The Uncertainty Advantage”, organized by SDA Bocconi School of Management. At the center of the day were the findings of a survey the School conducted to understand how organizations are dealing with uncertainty and which capabilities can make a difference.

From uncertainty to readiness

The survey uses the term readiness to describe the ability to shift priorities, experiment, collaborate, and lead amid uncertainty. Among respondents who perceive a high level of uncertainty, half describe their organization as underprepared.

Readiness shapes how organizations react. In less prepared organizations, 68% of respondents report a defensive response, with centralized decisions and a wait-and-see approach. In better prepared ones, that figure drops to 17%, while experimentation and team autonomy increase. Individual skills matter, and so do the conditions that enable people to act, collaborate, and learn from experience.

“The advantage of uncertainty comes from two capabilities: learning as events unfold and turning what we learn into organizational knowledge,” said Leonardo Caporarello, Associate Dean for Online Learning at SDA Bocconi.

A managerial responsibility

This is where uncertainty meets the responsibility of management. Opening the Forum, SDA Bocconi Dean Stefano Caselli reminded the audience that management means responsibility toward people, organizations, and society. Recognizing the gaps that run through companies and communities and managing their risks is the daily work of every organization, the “mind the gap.” The ambition is to “fill the gap”, taking responsibility for closing those gaps by building responses and creating value.

Developing the skills to make decisions under uncertainty ranks among the top two priorities for 64% of respondents, with managing AI’s impact on roles and processes following at 50%. The capabilities seen as most urgent are adaptive leadership and change management (68%), followed by analytical thinking and decision-making with incomplete information (50%).
On AI, the survey points to a gap. Of those surveyed, 69% are in a phase of curiosity or experimentation, with limited integration into their processes. AI literacy appears among the priority skills for 17% of respondents, about a third of those who rank AI governance as a top priority. Governing AI means redesigning roles, processes, and responsibilities, and safeguarding the quality of judgment behind every decision.

The perspective widens when it comes to the relationship between business and institutions. “Uncertainty is unavoidable for private companies. The public sector is called on to face it and turn it into responses to the needs of citizens and businesses. Looking at this issue from the public sector’s perspective matters for companies too, since they work with the public sector and have to reckon with it,” noted Monica Otto, Director of Executive Education in Health, Government and Nonprofit at SDA Bocconi.

Testing the evidence against practice

The findings were discussed with Ludovico Callerio, CEO of Testbusters; Simona Introini, Group Chief People Officer at Forgital Group; Marco Siciliano, Country Chief Data Officer at Generali Italia; Lorenzo Diaferia, Adjunct Lecturer in Digital Transformation at SDA Bocconi; Maria Cucciniello, Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University; and Raffaella Saporito, Associate Professor of Practice in Government, Health and Not for Profit at SDA Bocconi. The conversation brought several of the survey’s key issues back to the surface: how to decide with partial certainty and involve people in shaping responses, how to make room for experimentation, how to build new skills, and how to keep judgment in people’s hands when using AI.

What ties these threads together is the idea that preparing for uncertainty means building capabilities that help organizations find their bearings even when the direction has to be set along the way. “We can’t expect to change the wind, but we can help find a compass,” said Emanuela Prandelli, Associate Dean for Open Executive Programs at SDA Bocconi.

This is also where SDA Bocconi’s executive education does its work: starting from solid evidence, testing it with people who make decisions every day, and turning it into capabilities that support individuals and organizations as they grow.
 

SDA Bocconi School of Management