Entrustability: The World Rewards People Who Turn Uncertainty into Certainty

In this “making money” module, many of the thinking tools we have discussed were implicitly addressed to entrepreneurs, founders, and freelancers: people who face the market directly, face customers directly, face cash flow directly, and experience profit or loss as something that lands on their own bodies.

Most people do not need to live that way. Maybe you do not want to deal every day with financing, hiring, contracts, taxes, media criticism, and online public opinion. Maybe you just want to stay inside an organization as an employee, the ordinary “worker.” But can you still play a large role and earn a high salary?

Of course you can. Many senior employees earn more than small business owners, and often feel more accomplished. If you can command large teams inside a company, why would you necessarily want to open a small restaurant? This essay is about how to make serious money inside a company.

An outsider looking at a highly paid person, perhaps with the eye of a mother-in-law judging a future son-in-law, might say: why does my son-in-law earn a million a year? Surely because he is excellent. He studied hard from childhood and graduated from a famous school, so he could enter a big company that is hard to get into. He works especially hard, stays late every day, and must have mastered core technology. The boss promoted him and raised his pay voluntarily, so he must also have high emotional intelligence.

This is not completely wrong, but it is the wrong way to think. Let us call it the “imperial examination mindset.” It imagines the world as a large exam hall, with a series of evaluation criteria for people. The world, in this view, ought to reward those who perform well on these criteria. If you meet the standards, you are high quality, and the world should provide the corresponding treatment. If it does not, that is unfair.

But the market is not an exam hall. A company is not an institution that hands out prizes. Wealth is created, not allocated downward. Whether you are excellent or hardworking is not the reason a company pays you highly. If a company is willing to pay you highly, it must be because you play a key role in the process of creating wealth.

Put simply, a company buys time with low pay, skill with medium pay, and “entrustability” with high pay.

The company is facing a vague, expensive problem with serious consequences, and everyone from top to bottom is anxious. When you arrive, can you compress this mass of chaotic information, conflicting goals, and responsibilities nobody wants to touch into a situation that can be judged, executed, and owned? Can we entrust this matter to you?

That is the real reason you earn high pay.

High Pay Is an Uncertainty Premium #

The most valuable ability inside a company is the ability to turn anxiety into order. To understand this, we first need to look from another angle and ask how a boss makes money.

For a long time, even many scholars could not explain why an owner’s profit could be so much higher than an ordinary employee’s income.

If a company is merely an operating institution, whether it produces products or provides services, and all results are completed through everyone’s joint effort, the boss has no supernatural power. The boss also has only 24 hours in a day. On what basis should the boss earn so much more?

In 1921, the American economist Frank Knight published Risk, Uncertainty and Profit [1], and people finally understood the answer. Knight’s answer was that profit comes from bearing uncertainty.

To produce a product, we must invest a great deal of money upfront. We must buy machines, hire workers, stockpile raw materials, and spend time on design. By the time the product is ready, perhaps six months have passed. Whether the market will still need that product by then is uncertain. Nobody can accurately predict what next year’s popular fashion will look like, but you must start stocking inventory this year.

This “uncertainty” is not the same as ordinary “risk.” Risk means you know the probability distribution, or at least can manage it through tools such as insurance. Uncertainty means you do not even know the probability distribution. You may not know whether the matter will still be meaningful in the future, or whether it will be replaced by something you never imagined. This is what we have previously called “Knightian uncertainty.”

If there were no uncertainty in the world, a company would be merely an execution machine. The boss would have no reason to earn profit, and everyone could simply receive a standard wage. But in reality, market demand, technological routes, regulation, customer budgets, supply chains, competitors, and internal teams are all full of uncertainty. Business therefore requires the boss’s own judgment, experience, and creativity. To a large extent, it involves unreasonable subjective choice, even a gamble. The boss may very well lose the gamble, so when the boss wins, you must allow a high profit. Otherwise nobody would play this game.

In a market economy, anyone can become a boss, but most people choose the stability of employment. Anyone who is not the chairperson’s relative and still dares to become a boss has at least some heroic appetite for risk.

A company is a machine trying to survive in an uncertain world. The boss is therefore not most concerned with “who is the most excellent,” but with “which part of the situation is the least stable.” Whoever can stabilize that part becomes valuable.

This does not mean effort and excellence are useless. High quality always helps. But what the world ultimately rewards is not effort or excellence. It rewards people who turn uncertainty into certainty.

Do not forget: uncertainty is the fuel of meaning. High pay is not an excellence award. It is an uncertainty premium.

From Assigned Tasks to Entrustment #

As soon as a person comes out to do real work, they will more or less turn some uncertainty into certainty. Even the smallest task creates a little more order after it is completed than before it began. The difference among people lies in scale and initiative.

The mindset of a junior employee is: tell me what to do, and I will do it. Give me a work order, and I will process it. Give me a spreadsheet, and I will fill it in. Give me a standard procedure, and I will follow it. Delivery work, customer service, basic operations, simple administration, assembly-line roles, and many jobs that are grandly called “knowledge work” all operate this way.

I exchange time and physical energy for wages. As for how much effect the work has, and how much money it helps the company make, that is your business, not mine.

Companies cannot function without such people, but they are highly replaceable. So their wages cannot be very high.

Mid-level employees go beyond procedure and use judgment and creativity. When a product manager states a requirement, an engineer can design the path and write the code, while a designer can produce the visuals. When the boss gives an instruction, a lawyer can draft the contract, a financial analyst can build the model, and a salesperson can close the deal. When a patient arrives, the doctor knows what to do. When the coach sends the star player onto the field, the star can actually score.

They do not sell time and physical energy. They sell skill. As the old phrase goes, after mastering civil and martial arts, one sells them to the emperor’s house. Many people think this is the ceiling for employees. It is not.

They are still waiting for someone else to define the task.

This is the source of pain for many technical experts. They feel product managers change requirements constantly, bosses swing between strategies, and cross-functional collaboration looks like a large-scale performance art piece. They think all of this is making trouble for them. They say: can you please define the requirements clearly? Only if you define them clearly can I do a good job.

The moment that sentence leaves your mouth, the ceiling of your salary has been revealed.

The market is inherently unclear. The product is inherently unclear. Competitors and customers are unclear. Why do you think you are entitled to clarity?

When you demand “clarity,” what you are really demanding is that someone else create for you a greenhouse-like, isolated, extremely user-friendly work environment. Inside that environment, you can go to work, express yourself, collect your salary, and leave. You do not intend to ask how this environment was created, and still less do you intend to be responsible for it. It is enough as long as they give you a job to do.

I recently watched a short video. A company had gone bankrupt. The boss behaved decently and paid all employees N+1 compensation. The employees were in quite positive spirits, some even smiling. Facing interviews, they said it was a little regrettable, but they were also looking forward to finding the next job. My comment on that scene was: they will only go on to help bring down the next company.

If a football team is relegated, where do you see the players smiling one by one? You worked here for so many years. Even if you did not hold equity, now that the company has been run into the ground, do you not feel even a little guilt? Where did your talent go? What value did your time and energy create?

Such people see themselves as “modules with interfaces.” I can be installed here, and I can be installed there. If the project succeeds, I receive a bonus. If the project fails, I switch companies. Of course you have that freedom. But if you are not skin in the game, do not expect high pay.

What High-End Employees Actually Do #

High-end employees do not require you to define the task clearly first.

What the boss gives them is often not a task, but a mass of anxiety:

“This new product still cannot get traction. Go find out where the problem is.”

“We are about to lose this major client. Go stabilize the relationship.”

“AI is rising. How exactly should we adjust the organization?”

“This department’s cost is too high, but we cannot simply cut people. Give me a plan.”

The boss may not even know what the anxiety is really about. The boss only knows that the matter is expensive, troublesome, consequential, and that nobody wants to take it.

When a high-end employee steps forward, the first sentence cannot be “Where is the requirements document?” or “Let me see the operating procedure.” They help you think the problem through.

First, they redefine the problem. You thought the problem was A, but the bottleneck is actually B. You thought technology was the issue, but in fact we have not kept up with customers. You thought sales were not working hard enough, but in fact the product positioning is wrong. You thought there were not enough people, but in fact the decision rhythm is too slow.

Second, they propose action. Let us do this first. Verify a small hypothesis before investing major resources. Stabilize the key client first, then discuss long-term transformation. Push ahead with version B for now, and decide after three weeks of metrics whether to double down.

Third, they provide logical support. Why should we do this? Because it reduces downside risk, buys time, preserves optionality, and gives the next decision evidence.

When the boss has no clue and no way forward, and you hold the whole messy situation upright like a stabilizing pillar, that is “entrustment.”

If everything is already clear before it is handed to you, that is merely task assignment.

But it is not enough to say you can handle uncertainty. You also have to be trusted. Trust is whether others dare to delegate authority to you. It is the credit accumulated by your past judgment. Then you also need leverage, meaning whether your judgment can influence more people, more money, more customers, and more processes.

If you can handle uncertainty, possess trust, and mobilize leverage, then your decisions and actions are essentially the enterprise organism engaging in “active inference.” Such people deserve high pay.

AI Makes Business Judgment More Valuable #

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 [2] said that among the core skills employers value most, the top three are analytical thinking, resilience and flexibility, and leadership and social influence. Notice that these are not specialized “hard skills.” They are soft powers for handling complex situations.

A 2024 OECD study [3] also found that among occupations with the highest AI exposure, the workers who truly gain wage growth are not simply those who know how to use a particular AI tool. They are people with three more upstream abilities.

The first is management ability: setting goals, dividing tasks, making trade-offs, and managing progress.

The second is business operations ability: understanding how the company’s business actually runs. Where do customers come from? How are orders delivered? Where does money enter? Where are costs stuck? At which point is risk greatest?

The third is social collaboration ability: communication, persuasion, negotiation, cross-functional coordination, and trust building.

Put simply, AI will make producing an answer cheaper, but it will not automatically tell you which business chain the answer should be embedded in, who should execute it, and who is responsible when something goes wrong. The OECD data suggests that AI has not replaced business judgment. It has pushed business judgment into a more valuable position.

Even without AI, high-paying roles in every industry are already dealing with some form of uncertainty.

A high-end project manager does not sell Gantt charts and meetings to chase progress. They sell the feeling that “someone is finally in charge of this thing.” They turn vague requirements into specifications, cross-functional dependencies into milestones, and mutual blame into accountable interfaces.

A high-end software developer is not merely someone who “can write code,” but someone who can ensure the system does not collapse.

A high-end finance manager does not merely handle routine accounts, but cash flow, budget variance, capital costs, and tail risks. Many companies do not die from a lack of profit. They die from broken cash flow.

A high-end lawyer is not a machine for reciting statutes. Their work is to turn legal gray areas into contract boundaries, transaction paths, and compliance red lines. A compliance officer may not directly create a single dollar of revenue, but can prevent a fine, lawsuit, license loss, or failed listing.

Before Tim Cook became Apple’s CEO in 2011, he was COO, responsible for worldwide sales and operations. He rose through supply chain management. You think supply chain is just a back office function? Cook tightened global factories, inventory, channels, delivery, and cash cycles into one machine and ensured the company could respond flexibly to the market. That is uncertainty compression at the highest level.

According to statistics [4], among A-share listed companies in 2024, 12 chairpersons earned more than 10 million yuan, 85 general managers earned more than 5 million yuan, and 1,070 board secretaries earned more than 1 million yuan. You think a board secretary is merely a “senior secretary”? They face the capital market directly, and their responsibilities include information disclosure, investor relations, refinancing, and regulatory inquiries. One incorrect announcement or one uncontrolled communication can damage market value and credit. High pay is not because they “can write documents.” It rewards them for stabilizing capital-market uncertainty.

The Compound Route of Trust and Leverage #

How can young people grow into this kind of talent?

The imperial examination mindset follows the path of learning skills, collecting certificates, finding a job, getting promoted, and receiving a raise. It hopes to obtain treatment by becoming excellent. But the path of business thinking and market thinking is:

handle small uncertainty → win small trust → gain small leverage → handle larger uncertainty → win larger trust → gain larger leverage…

This is the compound interest of wealth inside a company.

Of course you should learn many skills, and graduating from a famous school is even better. But those things are only tools and door-openers. The company has no obligation to pay for your “excellence.” How high your pay becomes depends on the uncertainty you can handle, and on the trust and leverage you possess.

You must send the organization a signal: I am not a feedback black hole. I am not a person who says “I thought.” I am not an apprentice waiting for others to feed me certainty. I am a credible node that can handle disorder.

Ownership: Output Order #

I have a friend named Zhao Peipei, an executive at a manufacturing company in the United States. He once shared a thought with me: “Employees should have an entrepreneurial mindset, and entrepreneurs should have an employee mindset.” What does that mean?

If you are an entrepreneur, the company is yours, but that does not mean you can run it however you like. You must make the company formal and orderly. Many startups fail because the company is not run properly. Systems are incomplete, employees feel as though they are fighting a war every day, and there is no work-life balance. Investors see such chaos and do not want to invest.

If you are an employee, by contrast, you should have a sense of ownership and carry the company on your shoulders. You cannot think only about doing the work within your formal scope and receiving the pay within your formal scope. You need to take the initiative to do things outside your assigned duties. Zhao Peipei often voluntarily represents the company in partnership discussions, and when he eats with clients, he never asks the company to reimburse him. He does not haggle with the company over such small accounts. He does not even care much about his base salary. He makes money through company stock. He operates the company as though it were his own.

Are such people too rare today?

Look around at your colleagues, and you may find that many employees have the mentality of students. They wait for others to make the rules clear, wait for leaders to assign tasks, wait for product managers to state requirements, and wait for the organization to provide certainty: “If I did the right thing, you must reward me. Otherwise you are unfair.”

But why? Why should others build such a reward environment for you? You need to understand that you can sit there only because someone else is taking responsibility on your behalf.

There is a phrase associated with American military officers: “extreme ownership” [5]. I own this. This area is mine to manage. I will bear the relevant responsibility. I will coordinate the relevant variables. If something goes wrong, I will not shift blame. China also has an old saying: “One may be entrusted with an orphan six chi tall, entrusted with the fate of a hundred li of territory, and remain unshaken in a great crisis. Is he a gentleman? He is indeed a gentleman.”

Adults must make others feel safe handing them a piece of the world. You must be responsible for the territory you hold.

To earn high pay, what you output is not time, physical effort, or skill. It is order.

Closing poem:

Do not mistake the cold window’s grind for a banner of reward; full talent may still be misled by empty fame. When storm and thunder arrive, no one rises; when drums sound at the gate, they still ask for instructions. They are used to seeking fixed answers at the desk, but have never entered the field to solve the maze. Poor are the seats full of people called brilliant; before battle, they still wait like examinees for the question.

Notes

[1] Knight, Frank H. Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921. See also Elite Daily, Season 4, “What Exactly Is Profit?”

[2] World Economic Forum. The Future of Jobs Report 2025. Geneva: WEF, 2025.

[3] Green, Andrew. “Artificial Intelligence and the Changing Demand for Skills in the Labour Market.” OECD Artificial Intelligence Papers, no. 14. Paris: OECD Publishing, 2024.

[4] Sina Finance / Time Business Research Institute: “2024 A-Share Listed Company Executive Compensation Ranking,” 2025.

[5] Willink, Jocko, and Leif Babin. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015. See also Elite Daily, Season 1, Advanced Training Manual 2: The Commander’s Bearing.