What to do?

For the coaches, our course is clear. Our role is to maximise the career potential of our clients, by building on their strengths, and eliminating weakness, so that when the next promotional opportunity comes along, they are the obvious and outstanding candidate.

That can sometimes mean acting as a cheerleader for the firm, when our client is saddling up for their next round of retrenchments, and is wondering if it's all worth it - or they're privy to information as a member of the management team that they know could potentially have a damaging effect on their workmates - or they're concerned about the transparency of a process that they think could backfire on the firm - or any one of a hundred little issues that can arise.

Over the years I've developed my own technique for keeping recalcitrant idealists in the corporate boat. My colleagues would I'm sure have many other techniques to consider, but I'm going to share mine with you today in the hope that you may find some practical application for it in assisting your own colleagues to cope with ambiguity.

In my experience, the most successful technique is to appeal to the essentially interventionist nature of the idealist. Idealists have an innate urge to fix things, and usually find the opportunity to do so irresistible.

Capitalising on that desire to make things better is a very effective way of making the point that among the responsibilities and privileges of power is the opportunity to make changes, and drive culture.

And frankly, the prevailing times will suit those people who have traditionally been seen as not great at managing ambiguity.

The greater emphasis on transparency, the push by shareholders for greater accountability, the increasing awareness of the role of business in the community, the rise of the stakeholder classes means that ambiguity is not quite the strategic tool that it once was.

Many of those currently in leadership roles in organisations are responding to pressure from funds managers for greater clarity, more defined timelines, and more specific information around issues like succession planning, and much of the pressure is being applied, publicly, through the media.

In these scenarios, ambiguity carries big risks, and a leader who is anything other than perfectly straightforward and truthful is a walking time-bomb. I'm not going to name them, but we all know who they are!

So perhaps the relationship between leadership and ambiguity needs to be re-calibrated. The very nature of competition, which is the life-blood of the capitalist system, means that there will always be times when we can't be absolutely truthful. Mergers and acquisitions, new product launches, staff changes are all common instances where ambiguity is the tool of choice, and we do that, not because we are dishonest, but because we have to preserve our competitive position.

And that's fine - but I do think we have to be honest with ourselves about the relevance of ambiguity in the business context. It seems to me that ambiguity is sometimes a useful short-term tactic, but that it has no future as a long term strategy.

With another hat on, I've spent a large part of my life thinking about the importance of brands, and the unspoken values that underlie them. And the cornerstone of all great brands is trust. It's the cornerstone of the reputation of all great firms. It's the cornerstone of every important human relationship. It's the cornerstone of all our beliefs in our major institutions - and when we are persistently ambiguous, in our dealings with our stakeholders, or our customers, or our employees then they lose trust in us.