Ambivalence: the optimal compromise?

Image by Thingo via Flickr

“It is not necessary to deny another’s reality in order to affirm your own.”
Anne Wilson Schaef

As I reflected on what I wrote in last weeks post I began to think about two things:

Firstly, the occasions when the kind of conversation that seems to be needed is one in which it is incredibly tricky not to seem like you are denying someone else’s reality. I think here particularly of the circumstance when, as a manger, a conversation with someone about their performance of the tasks they have been given or their behaviour in the workplace seems to be unavoidable.

Secondly, the simple but often overlooked observation that all conversations, no matter how fleeting, are accompanied by some sort of power dynamic. I think here of the times when I have needed to speak to someone who can make a particular thing possible for me, but who also has the power to deny me what I want. I think also of those times when I have had the legitimate authority to direct others to do something, and how often that felt like using a sledgehammer to crack open a walnut.

It seems to me that I frequently tried, often non-consciously, to hold two seemingly contradictory positions: a view about how things ought to be and an openness to the possibility that my view might be in some way not the whole picture. I don’t quite know when I came to that point. My mother would tell you that, as a teenager, I had little sense that I could be wrong, so it was after that time!

Is it possible to “hold” two seemingly contradictory views of the same thing?

Clearly it is, but it is damned uncomfortable and awkward sometimes and often goes against the grain of what conventional wisdom suggests for leaders and managers.

In a wonderful exploration of how some of his ideas have evolved entitled Vita Contemplativa: Mundane Poetics: Searching for Wisdom in Organization Studies (usually subscription only but available free online until the end of September), academic Karl Weick talks about his deepening appreciation for ambivalence. He admits, in fact, that for him ambivalence is the “optimal compromise”.

He illustrates what he is talking about by reference to a system practiced by wildland firefighters in the US called LCES. This system prescribes that a firecrew should not attack a fire until its Lookouts, Communication links, Escape routes (at least two) and Safety zones are in place and known to everyone. Weick suggests that this is an “… optimal compromise of knowledge and doubt”.

“The placement of lookouts and the activation of communication imply that one knows what is going on and how the local conditions are related to the bigger picture of an active fire. The attention to escape routes and safety zones, however, implies that what one knows may be incomplete and that this potential ignorance needs to be recognized and hedged.”

This seems to me to be a very useful metaphor for those times when we, either individually or collectively, are attempting to hold both knowledge and doubt at the same time.

Something To Do This Week

Pay attention to situations and conversations in which it may be wise to hold both knowledge and doubt. Ask yourself, in this situation or conversation:

1. Where are my lookouts?
2. What are my communication links? When and how will I listen to them?
3. Where are my escape routes and when should I use them?
4. Where are my safety zones and how do I get to them?