In this episode of The Banker’s Bookshelf, host Paolo Sironi welcomes Tony Fish, author of Decision Making in Uncertain Times, for a wide-ranging conversation on navigating fundamental uncertainty in finance, technology, and leadership.
Tony explains that the book stems from his experience as a severely dyslexic and autistic thinker. Written primarily for neurotypical readers, it shows how people who see the world differently approach uncertainty, so that boardrooms can better understand and use those perspectives. Rather than offering a single framework or model, the book presents ten distinct ways of viewing the same situation. Central to this is the idea of paradox: the same data can support two valid but opposing interpretations. Fish argues that every important decision should contain a paradox; without it, decisionmakers remain trapped inside an existing frame. The final chapter explores “Peak Paradox.”
He contends that many foundations of modern decision-making—money, law, time, and especially counting—are human inventions that do not exist in nature. Counting does not equal truth, yet metrics and trend lines are routinely treated as truth. KPIs often begin for narrow reasons (incentives, bonuses) and then persist as “ghosts in the system,” even after the original purpose disappears and the underlying data changes.
On AI and geopolitics, Fish describes sovereignty as Schrödinger’s cat: simultaneously alive and dead. What once meant freedom from asking permission now means interdependence. Claims of AI sovereignty, he says, are “unbelievable levels of madness.” Companies are becoming more sovereign than states, while limited-liability structures are failing. He points to the need to rethink what companies are for.
Fish distinguishes choices, decisions, and judgment. Children are typically offered A or B and asked to decide but rarely taught to ask whether the right choices were even presented. Dyslexic thinkers often see the missing options. Judgment—reflection on whether the available choices were adequate—should begin early and be central to leadership, not reserved for later life.
Finally, he introduces “consurgence,” an old English word meaning “rising together.” Trust, leadership, and success cannot simply be built; they may emerge from conditions, or they may not. There are no guarantees. The constructionist mindset that tries to engineer the perfect outcome (the best teams, the best pitch, the best game) fails to account for this. Banking, he notes, often claims to “build” trust, yet trust cannot be constructed on command.
