The Uncertainty Advantage: How Smart Leaders Turn Volatility into Growth
Welcome to Episode 229 of The Executive Edge — the podcast for skills in life and business.
This week, my guest is Dr Rebecca Homkes.
Rebecca is a high-growth strategy specialist who advises CEOs and executive teams. She is a Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Lecturer at the London Business School (LBS) Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at BCGU (Boston Consulting Group), and previous Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE)’s Centre for Economic Performance.
On the show, Rebecca and I discuss the precarious nature of leading through uncertainty.
With macro volatility showing no signs of letting up, Rebecca shares a practical, no-nonsense framework for how executives can stop reacting to the noise — and start growing through it.
Key Themes & Takeaways
Build internal predictability:
You can’t control the macro environment, but you can build an organisation that knows how to adapt. Instead of chasing certainty from outside, focus on creating consistency, clarity, and agility within.
Develop strategic beliefs — not just trend lists:
Ditch the endless list of environmental trends. Instead, identify 8–15 core strategic beliefs that underpin your decisions. Use these as a tracker — monitoring what affirms or challenges them — so you filter signal from noise rather than drowning in both.
Reframe uncertainty:
Language matters. When leaders talk about “managing” or “handling” uncertainty, they pre-load it as a threat. Uncertainty is simply a set of future events — some will be opportunities. Organisations that lean into uncertainty as the best environment to learn are the ones that grow through it.
Growth is a loop, not a line:
Stop expecting a linear path to success. The Survive → Reset → Thrive model acknowledges that leaders will cycle back through phases — and that’s not failure, it’s the loop working as it should. The reset is the power move.
Focus is a parallel path:
Fewer priorities, properly resourced, outperform 25 half-funded initiatives every time. But focus alone isn’t enough — pair it with a built-in capability for adaptability. That’s how you stay nimble without losing momentum.
Shift from answers to questions:
The executive’s role is evolving. The leaders getting ahead right now aren’t the ones with all the answers — they’re the ones asking the right questions and empowering their teams to find them.
Learning vs teaching organisations:
As organisations mature, they often confuse sending people to seminars with actually learning. Real learning is active, in the field, and tight — and organisations that learn faster, grow faster.
Survive, Reset, Thrive
Rebecca’s book Survive, Reset, Thrive: Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times is an end-to-end playbook for growing through any environment — not just downturns. It’s especially relevant for leaders navigating tariffs, geopolitical shifts, or any macroeconomic uncertainty.
To learn more about Rebecca, visit her website or connect with her on Linkedin:
💼 LinkedIn: Rebecca Homkes
