003b
My work collapses into this simple code.
What takes shape is a semicolon. Neither a full stop nor a comma, it both connects and keeps apart. A threshold inviting a pause, uneasy, open, perhaps precarious?
We may continue from here. Or not.
not yet
We find ourselves in uncertainty. Every day.
You offer an idea in a meeting. The room falls silent. Time stands still. Agony.
A project begins with energy. Over time, it runs out of steam. Decisions take longer. And so do answers. Things get tangled. No one knows whether to lean in or hold back.
A town hall is packed. Everyone waits for the announcement. Until it comes, the room is pregnant with futures.
These are “not yet” moments. This is where uncertainty lives. Around us. Between us. In us.
The ground moves; those standing on it freeze.
Part of us leaves before we do.
the usual, read
We rush to diagnose.
Our attention turns to people: their motivation, competence, leadership, or communication. Someone, we infer, must be lacking something.
People stand out. Situations blend in.
the usual, re-read
Perhaps such confident explanations begin too late. They are certainly way too easy. Do we need to look elsewhere?
In uncertainty, doing something feels good; doing nothing, bad. Action gives us grip. Inaction leaves us feeling fragile and exposed. We care deeply about feeling capable.
But competence is fickle. It does not take much uncertainty to unsettle it, even undo it. Does competence really come first, to the rescue?
Not-yet moments can push us in different directions. On wobbly ground, some of us may become a little wiser, a little more capable, a little more skilled. Others may hesitate, shrink, or shirk.
Who we can be in a situation is not ours alone. Situations . Or they do not. Before we do something to them, they do something to us. We are not immune.
A closer look at wobbly ground does strange things. People appear differently within the situation.
Suddenly, situations stand out. People blend in.
ground-first; …
Ground-first doubts that action lies in the actor alone. It is less sure of hero-or-zero readings: It stays with what unfolds, even when it becomes uncomfortable, long enough to notice what quick diagnoses so easily miss.
The work of the semicolon begins before we know whether the situation will carry: holding open a not-yet moment without reaching for the relief of immediate action. Widening the frame beyond the actor. Bringing the situation into focus.
Action need not arrive as an immediate, ready-made answer. It can take shape as we move, in response to what unfolds. Feeling our way forward.
Ground first. Actor second.
… at work
This is where my work begins: with a situation already pulling you into the undertow of uncertainty.
I work with organisations and the people within them to loosen the grip and develop a sensibility for situations.
Actor-first is quite good at blaming and praising. It is also good at planning as if the way ahead was overly obvious. Ground-first does something else: It takes some of the weight off the actor. Feeling forward. Trying things out. Moving with others – slow or fast.
These are no lesser forms of action. They are closer to how action actually takes shape – without the corset of actor-first certainty.
Together, we trace what draws people in, what makes them shrink or shirk, what lets movement gather – and what keeps it from taking shape.
reading, re-reading,
Ground-first is not a toolkit. Nor is it another X-step route to making the actor more competent. Situations are rarely as tidy as ready-made methods pulled off the shelf to deal with them. They require reading. And re-reading.
But this does not leave us empty-handed. Quite the opposite: a situation re-read gives us more to work with than a toolkit that never quite fits.
Our work will leave you with a different reading of actor and ground, and of the relation between them, a new language for uncertainty, and questions that slow you down just enough to loosen familiar diagnoses.
The way through uncertainty is not certainty, but enough clarity to act without pretending that control and mastery are the answer.
I offer this work in three forms:
talks: An initial encounter with ground-first thinking, built around situations audiences recognise from their own professional lives. It offers a way of reading uncertainty and questions to carry back into their own work.
ground-first labs: Small working sessions for people already inside a live organisational situation. No generic case. No ready-made exercise. We question first, largely automatic reading, trace what that reading is doing to those within it, and try other readings to see what each allows us to see and do.
ongoing inquiries: Inevitably, some situations keep moving and cannot be read in a single session. A small group meets around a table at regular intervals. Participants bring what is unfolding in their work. We return to these situations over time, noticing what has shifted, what still holds, and what begins to carry.
in the making
For more than three decades, I have worked between academia and practice – as a professor, author, and adviser to international companies and senior executives.
Some things make best sense in hindsight. Looking back, my work folds into a single symbol: the semicolon. Around it gather questions of how uncertainty is lived and weathered, what it does to us, and how we act when we do not know.
I am currently bringing these experiences and questions together in a book about situations that carry – or do not. The book is where ground-first is taking shape.
Ground-first thinking and the semicolon reading of uncertainty
First published on 003b.de, 9 September 2026
© Sierk Horn, 2026
contact
If the ground has become wobbly beneath something that matters to you, I would be glad to hear from you.