There is a fundamental difference between Risk and Uncertainty.
Risk is playing Roulette. You don't know if Red or Black will hit, but you know the odds.
Uncertainty is playing Poker in a pitch-black room. You don't know the cards, you don't know the stakes, and you don't even know if the other players are still at the table.
Most companies think they're managing Risk. They look at their pipelines, their churn rates, their quarterly projections. They think they're playing Roulette.
They're playing in the dark.
The Narrative Gap
The "Market Position" you think you hold is just a narrative—a story you tell yourself in board meetings. "We are the premium provider." "We are the innovation leader."
But narratives are not data.
If your business relies on public contracts or large-scale B2B tenders, your revenue isn't determined by how good you think you are. It's determined by what the market actually does. If procurement data shows that 80% of contracts in your niche have shifted to a competitor with a lower price point, your projections aren't optimistic—they're fiction.
You are Long a narrative that has already gone Short.
Until you see the actual transaction data—who won, at what price—you cannot distinguish between a soft quarter and a structural shift. You continue to staff projects that won't be won. You maintain pricing models that are obsolete. You invest in "innovation" the buyer has already signaled they don't value.
Collapsing the Uncertainty
In public procurement, the winner is public record. The price is public record. This is not hidden information—it's ignored information.
When you actually look at who won and for how much, you convert Uncertainty back into Risk. Once you know Competitor X is winning 60% of tenders at a price point 15% below yours, you don't have a mystery. You have a pricing problem. Pricing problems can be solved.
But you cannot solve what you refuse to see.
Finding opportunities is easy. Knowing which ones you can win—that requires knowing who's been winning, and at what price.