This article is part of Busara’s Tafakari 2026 yearbook. You can download the whole yearbook here.
Over the past year, conversations across Busara have carried a familiar refrain: things feel uncertain. The world is changing quickly, the boundaries of our work are shifting, and the systems we try to understand seem to be moving faster than our frameworks can catch them. Yet perhaps uncertainty is not something to overcome, but something to understand as part of the system itself.
When we study complex systems, whether they involve health, financial inclusion, or gender-based violence, we are reminded that unpredictability is not an error. It is a sign of life. Systems adapt. They respond to pressure, incentives, and feedback. Every new intervention reshapes relationships, creating ripples that alter the very landscape we are trying to map.
In our work in Guatemala, for instance, we looked at how survivors of gender-based violence navigate the health system. What appeared at first as “inconsistency” among service providers revealed itself as adaptation under pressure. Frontline workers were not failing to follow protocols; they were constantly adjusting them to survive within a system stretched to its limits. Some prioritized emotional support over administrative procedures. Others created informal referral networks to make up for the absence of formal coordination. The uncertainty we observed was not a breakdown. It was the system finding temporary forms of balance in a context where the rules of care and capacity shifted daily.
A similar lesson has emerged from our work on labor informality in Suriname. We expected to find a clear set of barriers that kept people from formalizing their work. Instead, we identified fluid survival strategies. People entered and exited the formal system depending on opportunities, seasonality, and trust. What looked like inconsistency was actually intelligence, an ongoing negotiation between stability and flexibility. Their behavior made perfect sense once we understood the broader loops that shaped it: income volatility, weak institutional trust, and social networks that substituted for formal protection. What seemed like noise was actually the system speaking in its own language.
We have seen this pattern repeat across very different contexts. In Nigeria, during our evaluation of vitamin A supplementation processes, coordination among stakeholders often appeared fragmented. But when we looked closer, we realized that what seemed like disorder was a form of distributed adaptation. Local teams were adjusting schedules, reassigning resources, and creating their own accountability systems to make the program work. Each deviation from the plan was a local solution responding to real constraints. The uncertainty of implementation became a source of insight, showing us how flexibility and improvisation sustain large-scale systems.
These experiences remind us that uncertainty often points to the system’s ability to adapt. It forces us to pay attention to patterns that emerge only when we stop expecting stability. The tendency to seek control, to impose order, or to measure every fluctuation against a fixed plan can make us blind to the intelligence of systems. What we call “messy reality” is often just the system’s way of maintaining coherence under changing conditions.
In the language of behavioral science, uncertainty invites humility. It reminds us that no model, no matter how rigorous, can fully predict outcomes when people interact with a new idea, product, or policy. Humans do not behave like stable inputs in a formula; they behave like participants in a living ecosystem. Values, emotions, and shifting circumstances influence their choices. Our systems work at Busara constantly brings us back to this truth: if we want to create change that lasts, we must learn to design for uncertainty rather than against it.
For those of us who design behavioral interventions, this has practical consequences. It means that the goal is not to control the system but to engage with it. Instead of asking, “How can we make this predictable?” we might ask, “How can we make this adaptive?” It is a subtle but profound shift. It invites us to design feedback loops that help us learn faster, to prototype interventions that can evolve, and to accept that some degree of uncertainty is evidence that people are thinking, responding, and adjusting in real time.
Designing for adaptability is not about sacrificing rigor. It is about expanding its definition. True rigor lies in the discipline to observe change without rushing to close it off. It lies in documenting what worked, and what the system did with what we introduced. In Guatemala, we learned as much from what health workers developed independently as from the formal pilot we designed. In Suriname, informal practices revealed leverage points that were invisible in official data. These insights surfaced only because we stayed open to uncertainty long enough to let the system reveal its logic.
Uncertainty also has an emotional weight. It can feel uncomfortable, especially in organizations like ours, where evidence and structure are central values. We like to see progress. We like to measure it. We want to know if we are on the right path. Yet perhaps the real test of a learning organization is not how it performs when things go as planned, but how it responds when they do not. The systems lens reminds us that stability is not the natural state of things; change is. The challenge is to remain present enough to notice what is shifting, and disciplined enough to respond without rushing to restore control.
This year, I have seen teams across Busara embrace that challenge. Colleagues working in finance, health, and education have designed experiments that adapt to the realities of local partners and shifting environments. They have faced delays, unexpected findings, and sometimes setbacks. But each iteration has made the work richer. The willingness to learn from uncertainty, rather than fear it, has become one of Busara’s quiet strengths.
There is also a deeper lesson here about how we understand systems beyond our projects. Uncertainty is not only an external condition; it also exists within individuals and organizations. Our motivations change. Our understanding evolves. The ways we collaborate and lead are also part of the system we are trying to influence. A systemic lens invites us to see Busara itself as a living, adapting entity. What we learn in the field mirrors what we live in our teams: the tension between structure and flexibility, between planning and emergence, between certainty and curiosity.
Uncertainty is not a sign of weakness. It is an act of honesty. It creates space for collective sensemaking, reflection, and dialogue. It allows us to stop pretending that every outcome can be controlled and focus on strengthening the connections that help us adapt. When uncertainty is accepted, collaboration becomes easier. People share information faster. They experiment more. They take care of each other.
Perhaps that is the quiet power of systems thinking. It teaches us to see uncertainty not as a threat, but as evidence that the system is alive — still responding, still moving, still capable of change. Every loop we map, every variable we trace, is a reminder that complexity cannot be flattened into certainty. It can only be understood through participation.
At Busara, we often talk about our mission to use behavioral science to improve lives. To do that, we must also keep improving how we think. The past few years have shown that the world will not slow down to match our plans. But it will reward those who listen closely to its rhythms, see patterns in what seems chaotic, and design with humility and imagination.
Uncertainty, then, is not a passing phase to be managed. It is the rhythm of change itself. And if we can learn to move with it, not against it, we might find that the system has been teaching us how to dance all along.
Emiliano Diaz del Valle an Engagement Director working in Latin America at Busara. His work in integrating behavioral science and systems thinking has had a transformative impact on our approach to the work.
