Mundane Poetics: Searching for Wisdom in Organizational Theory

10



THE IMPERMANENT ORGANIZATION



A pattern often associated with impermanence involves the sequence that starts with

streaming experience, followed by interruption, recovery, and mundane streaming. The

shorthand that we often use for this pattern of impermanence is borrowed from Heidegger

(e.g. see Chapter 5 in this book). Streaming ϭ ready-to-hand immersion in activity, interruption ϭ unready-to-hand disruption in activity, and recovery ϭ either present-at-hand atomistic analysis of the activity or resumption of ready-to-hand immersion. As will become

clear, the restored mundanity seldom resembles the initial mundanity, a difference that is

captured by scholars of emergence (e.g. Plowman et al., 2007). It is a linguistic challenge

to create descriptions of these streaming patterns without the help of a ‘poetic’ voice. This

was evident to Clifford Geertz who coined the word ‘faction’ to describe social science

description as ‘imaginative writing about real people, in real places, at real times’ (Horgan,

1998, p. 155).

Part of the craft of ‘searching’ for fleeting social order involves careful choice of one’s

assumptions. Since these assumptions constrain what one will see (‘believing is seeing’),

it is important to be explicit and deliberate about such choices. There is a note of wishful

thinking in my use of the verb ‘choose’ since many assumptions we impose are invisible

hard-wired templates created by socialization. That is partly why I try in this chapter to

be clear about some of those whose assumptions have socialized me.

Among the assumptions that I have found useful are those involving continuity, evolution, ambivalence, complexity, and levels of analysis. The assumption of continuity, in

Putnam and Saveland’s words (2008), says that:

Our mental routines go with us wherever we go. We don’t suddenly act differently when

organizations are involved. We routinely go off on mental ‘side trips’ (such as daydreaming) throughout the day and seem surprised at our capacity to miss situational cues that

can result in poor decisions in environments where the consequences are more severe

(Putnam and Saveland, 2008, p. 107).



The assumption of evolution supplies a mechanism that orders and edits flux. The

assumption of ambivalence highlights a criterion for editing flux, namely preserve adaptability. The assumption of levels does away with the distinction between macro and micro

and grounds organizing in relationships rather than individuals. Finally, the assumption of

complexity highlights the variety in both internal and external environments. Mismatched

variety increases the frequency of impermanence. These five assumptions are developed

in Chapter 2, and their influence is visible in subsequent chapters.

The final key word in the title, ‘wisdom,’ points to a growing emphasis in organizational theory (e.g. Kessler and Bailey, 2007) on ‘the acquired ability to create viable realities from equivocal circumstances and to use informed judgment to negotiate prudent

courses of action through the realities created’ (Gioia, 2007, p. 287). The ‘creation of

viable realities’ is a continuing activity which means that no one reality is permanent. The

‘wisdom’ of impermanence lies in not clinging to that which will vanish anyway. It also

lies in accepting the necessity to reaccomplish realities that seemed to be stable and in

action that reflects an awareness of incomplete information, action that blends knowledge with ignorance.

The following article was published in Organization Studies, 2004, 25(4), 653–668.



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Vita Contemplativa

Mundane Poetics: Searching for

Wisdom in Organization Studies

Karl E. Weick

The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Organization Studies, Issue

25(4), Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications Inc. Reprinted with permission.



Abstract

The craft of idea generation is explored autobiographically, using as the core principle the theme that ideas generate their own contexts for development. Ideas generate

their own contexts by means of conceptual affinities, as is illustrated by the author’s

movement from ideas about unintended consequences to ideas about cognitive dissonance, enacted environments, organizational failures, and wisdom. Ideas also generate

their own context by means of the assumptions they entail, in the author’s case, these

entailments being assumptions of continuity, evolution, ambivalence, complexity, and

levels of analysis. When activated, these diverse resources may generate portraits of

human organizing that have poetic overtones, but that resemblance simply mirrors

the fact that people do poetry in their everyday living.

Keywords: idea generation, assumptions about organizing, organizational process,

breakdowns



Barbara Czarniawska (2003) describes six styles of organizational theory including scientistic (e.g. Thompson), revolutionary (e.g. Burrell), philosophical (e.g. March), educational (e.g. Silverman), ethnographic (e.g. Van Maanen), and the one she identifies with

my work, ‘poetic’.1 It is true that some of the more popular parts of the organizational

behavior books I’ve written have been the poems I cite. How I work and who I am may

be reflected in those choices more candidly than I realized or intended. The poems in

the 1995 book on sensemaking (Weick 1995) would introduce me as a person of many

selves (‘We are Many’: Pablo Neruda, pp. 18–22) concerned with crafting words that

imaginatively capture the human condition in organizations (‘What I Remember the

Writers Telling Me’: William Meredith, p. 196). Those many selves, realized within writing, continue to reveal themselves in additional poems contained in The Social Psychology

of Organizing (Weick 1979). Here we find the author pursuing journeys to gain a new

understanding of his confusion (‘In Broken Images’: Robert Graves, p. 224), journeys

that are their own reward and will make sense only when they are viewed retrospectively

(‘Ithaca’: C. P. Cavafy, pp. 263–264).



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KARL E. WEICK



What makes the poetic designation tricky, however, is that a poetic style is hard

to describe and imitate because ‘uniqueness forms part of what is perceived as elegant’

(Czarniawska 2003: 255). Furthermore, poetic stylists ‘need not know how they

are doing what they are doing in order to do it brilliantly’. These hurdles notwithstanding, I want to discuss ideas, their contexts and their development, with an eye

to illustrating one ‘logic of creation’. The result may not be imitable, but at least it will

demystify.

I take my lead for this essay from Paul Valéry.

‘We say that an author is original when we cannot trace the hidden transformations that

others underwent in his mind; we mean to say that the dependence of what he does on

what others have done is excessively complex and irregular. There are works in the likeness

of others, and works that are the reverse of others, but there are also works of which

the relation with earlier productions is so intricate that we become confused and attribute

them to the direct intervention of the gods. (To go deeper into the subject, we should

have to discuss the influence of a mind on itself and of a work on its author).’ (Paul

Valéry, cited in Bloom 2002: 494)



As a first anchor, let me mention some predecessors who have undergone ‘transformations’ in my mind. The identity of those ‘others’ is not hidden, nor is my dependence

on them hard to spot. Harold Garfinkel and Leon Festinger taught me about retrospect,

Gregory Bateson and Magorah Maruyama taught me about systems, Floyd Allport

taught me about interaction, George Mandler taught me about interruption, Donald

Campbell taught me about social evolution, Dick Neisser taught me about cognition,

Alfred Schutz taught me about interpretation and expression in everyday life, James

March taught me about organizations, Gary Klein taught me about experience and

expertise, Marianne Paget taught me about mistakes, William James taught me about

the human condition, and Norman Maclean taught me about the human condition in

Mann Gulch. These teachers had their impact largely through contexts created by their

writing. In order to make myself more open to these contexts, I read, imagine, connect,

practice virtual ethnography in the armchair, write, and edit. Those are moves of the

imagination working within soft constraints.

The variety of these 13 topics — retrospect, systems, interaction, interruption, evolution, cognition, interpretation, organizations, experience, expertise, mistakes, the human

condition, and Mann Gulch — suggests that Valéry is probably right. My dependence

on the works of others is complex, irregular, intricate, and filled with ‘hidden transformations’. The problem then is that any effort on my part to talk about the development of ideas will be a plausible rendering at best. Hidden means hidden. But the author

does deserve a say, since he or she has access to a different set of data such as activities

underway, places where writing occurred, books that were spread out on the desk, the

content of notes and marginalia, not to mention well intentioned aspirations and

the improvisations that followed when those aspirations collapsed. I want to talk about the

development of ideas largely by talking about the contexts that ideas and assumptions

themselves set up. Since both of these contexts exert pressure simultaneously, often in

ways that are contradictory, it is not surprising that one’s work lurches between topics and within topics due to complex dependencies. Analysts are basically thrown into

the middle of ongoing intellectual traditions, styles, people, and problems. It’s all pretty



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chaotic. The trick is to make sense of the chaos, and in my case to then make sense of the

making sense of chaos.

There is certainly more to idea development than ideas and assumptions, but I have

discussed these other autobiographical inputs (e.g. Weick 1993) and tactical inputs

(e.g. Weick 1992) elsewhere. Here, I want to focus on ideas.



Ideas as Context

Ideas can serve as their own context. If ideas are equated with plans or blueprints or

patterns, then they are pragmatic tools that direct activities, including the activity of

their own expansion and development.

In my own case, Robert Merton’s discussion of unanticipated consequences, as summarized by March and Simon in Organizations (1958), was a powerful initial anchor

that triggered several subsequent variants. I was fascinated by the idea that there were

orderly but unintentional progressions by which people got into trouble, progressions

that arose from situational complexity and selective perception. This fascination with

Merton is already a bit ironic because I learned about his ideas while reading the classic

work Organizations. Thus, I came away from a classic intrigued by the ideas of a person

the authors of the classic were trying to replace.

The idea of unanticipated consequences first became a tool for me in the context of a

study of productivity in two research teams working on the design of heart valves and

semi-conductors (Pepinsky et al. 1966). In both cases, team members spent considerable time doing what we came to call ‘façade maintenance’. The teams were more concerned with metrics that demonstrated their productivity to project monitors than with

the problem itself. More façade maintenance was practiced by the less productive team,

which meant that the better they looked, the worse they were doing. Looking productive didn’t serve to create latitude and autonomy to do the real work, as many thought

it would. Instead, façade maintenance became the work. Tied to the then current idea

of impression management (Goffman 1959), what we were watching was an initial

separation between front-stage façade maintenance and backstage research, a separation that began to break down as people spent more time and effort maintaining the

façade. A potential vicious circle was set in motion in which more maintenance meant

less productivity which necessitated more maintenance which led to even less productivity, all triggered by the mundane requirement to file quarterly progress reports.

In their efforts to see how people were doing, project monitors made it impossible for

people to do things.

The idea of unanticipated consequences set up a context in which I welcomed cognitive

dissonance theory (Festinger 1957) as a more compact, more psychological, more manageable way to think about unanticipated consequences. Dissonance research produced

findings such as decreased incentives for doing an activity led to increased attraction to

the activity; disconfirmed expectations led to intensified adherence to the expectation;

effort expenditure led to heightened evaluation of worthless activities in which the effort

was invested. All of these seemed like instances of unanticipated consequences triggered

by insufficient justification. So I was still watching the unexpected materialize, but now

I had a way to think about it. In my dissertation I combined dissonance theory with a



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KARL E. WEICK



concept attainment task that modeled research team activity, and saw how productivity could be pressed into the service of dissonance reduction. In this microcosm were the

precursors of an enacted environment, sensemaking under pressure, confirmation bias,

mutual reinforcement of thought and action, and commitment. In other words, cognitive

dissonance was and continues to be2 a way of thinking that serves as an entry point into

all sorts of problems, including persistent medical errors such as occurred at the Bristol

Royal Infirmary, wildland fire entrapments such as occurred at South Canyon, and withheld communications such as occurred at Tenerife.

But, while vestiges of the idea of dissonance persist (e.g. Harmon-Jones and HarmonJones 2003), so too does the idea of unanticipated consequences. Concurrent with

studies of dissonance, I did work on unanticipated consequences associated with overload, stress, interruption, breakdowns, and cosmology episodes. The bulk of the unanticipated consequences tended to be negative and included outcomes such as regression,

flight, tunnel vision, self-justification, compartmentalization, and denial. But a more

complicated story has also been developing. Unanticipated means just that, something

that is not foreseen. And one could fail to foresee positive outcomes, recoveries, and

learning just as much as more negative outcomes.

I still find myself intrigued by what seem to be mistakes, errors, and adverse events,

but now they seem to be a whole lot less straightforward. I marvel at Marianne Paget’s

(1988) nuanced argument that actions become mistaken, they don’t start as mistakes.

James Reason’s (1997) conceptualization of chains of errors speaks to systems that

set up failure, as is true also for Charles Perrow’s (1984) work on normal accidents.

Interruptions, when viewed in the context of Heidegger’s ‘unready to hand’ moments,

become ideal sites where practice and theory meet and inform one another (Weick

2003). When people seem to forget the lessons they’ve learned, this may represent an

adaptive move in which they discredit some of their experience because they find themselves in what seems to be a novel environment. This possibility shows up in discussions

of the ‘attitude of wisdom’, which is acting as if one both knows and doesn’t what is

happening and what to do about it.

The stream of ideas here runs from unanticipated consequences, through dissonance

and interruptions, and is currently visible in discussions of wisdom, becoming, and

recovery. This progression seems to qualify as mundane poetics since it basically recapitulates what pragmatists, especially John Dewey, view as the natural logic by which

people evaluate and reconstruct their experience. To see this, consider Thayer’s summary of Dewey’s ideas about truth.

‘Inquiry is initiated in conditions of doubt; it terminates in the establishment of conditions

in which doubt is no longer needed or felt. It is this settling of conditions of doubt, a settlement produced and warranted by inquiry, which distinguishes the warranted assertion . . .

The purpose of inquiry is to create goods, satisfactions, solutions, and integration in what

was initially a wanting, discordant, troubled, and problematic situation. In this respect all

intelligence is evaluative and no separation of moral, scientific, practical, or theoretical

experience is to be made.’ (Thayer 1967: 434–435)



So, as I weave my way from ideas about unanticipated consequences to ideas about

the attitude of wisdom, I simply act like any pragmatist who moves from conditions



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where doubt is paramount, to conditions where it is assimilated, accepted, and converted into coping and organizing and into warranted assertions about how people cope

and organize.

The point is, ideas shape ideas, they lead on to other ideas, they enact their own contexts. Tactically, to follow these leads one must trust in the power of free association to

reveal unexpected connections. Mundane poetics may consist of warranted assertions,

but the intelligence to get there is helped along by intuition (Klein, 2003), System 1 thinking (Kahnemann 2003), and trust in the plausibility of initially puzzling connections.



Assumptions as Context

Assumptions provide a reality that is taken as given, a reality that exerts influence over

what one notices and ignores and labels as significant. My work on topics such as sensemaking, organizing, and heedful interrelating hangs together (albeit tacitly) through

many assumptions, a few of which I want to make explicit.



Assumption of Continuity

This assumption was made explicit in 1969 (Weick 1969: 25–27) when I criticized the

phrase ‘organizational behavior’ because it tempted us to look for uniqueness in reified

places, and drew attention away from the fact that behavior is behavior. The argument

went like this.

‘Events inside organizations resemble events outside; sensitivities of the worker inside are

continuous with sensitivities outside. Since people have as much desire to integrate the

various portions of their life as to compartmentalize them, what happens inside affects

what happens outside, and vice versa. This is a roundabout way of saying that continuity from setting to setting is more likely than discontinuity . . . Rather than searching for

unique behaviors that occur within an organization and then building a theory about this

uniqueness, it seems more useful to build theories about particular ways that enduring

individual dispositions are expressed in an organizational setting, and about the effects of

this expression.’ (Weick 1969: 25–26)



A good example of this is found in the behavior of aircraft pilots (Allnut, in Weick

1995: 103–104):

‘A pilot may say that he does not allow his work and his domestic life to mix: but the statement can only be partly true. Human beings are 24 hour-a-day people, possessing only

one brain with which to control all of their activities; and this brain has to cover both

work and play. In sum, events which happen in one segment of daily life may therefore

influence what happens in other segments. The pilot who has just quarreled violently is in

a dangerous state, for although he may have moved away from the person with whom he

has quarreled, and climbed aboard his aircraft, the physiological and psychological effects

of the quarrel may last well into the flight, and the crushing retort which he wishes he

had thought of at the time of the argument may crowd his single decision channel to the

exclusion of more important information.’



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To put this assumption of continuity into practice is to treat all lived experience as

relevant data for organizing and to presume that reflection on those data is relevant

to organizational life. To assume continuity is to pay more attention to situations, contexts, roles, and processes of structuring by means of actions and perceptions, and less

attention to structures, entities, boundaries.

One effect of the assumption of continuity is that it favors an additional assumption,

namely, ‘response repertoires control noticing’ (Weick 1969: 26). That implication continues to underlie my thinking about change, interpretation, and failure. Originally, the

idea of response repertoires and noticing came from a gloss of George Herbert Mead’s

assertion that ‘ act is an impulse that maintains the life process by selection of cerAn

tain sorts of stimuli it needs. Thus, the organism creates its environment. The stimulus

is the occasion for the expression of the impulse’ (Mead 1956: 120). If people notice

stimuli that permit them to do what they want to do, then as wants vary so too do the

features that are noticed. But ‘impulses that maintain life’ are broader than wants, and

also include such things as abilities, functional attitudes, and values. This suggests that

behavior can be viewed as responses in search of excuses for expression. Thus, people

tend to see those problems and opportunities that their repertoire can handle, but they

are reluctant to see those it can’t. Organizations now become salient as one among many

sites of potential stimuli that will be noticed or ignored depending on the response repertoires that people activate. Organizational socialization, training, and culture can modify

repertoires, but they seldom wipe out everything that was there before.

Taken even further, assumptions about continuity and response repertoires affect

inquiry about organizational life.

‘If one gains an understanding of response repertoires and the conditions under which

attention is controlled by the content of these repertoires, then a more substantial theory

about organizations and behaviors can be built. The theory would concentrate on attention rather than on action. It would essentially ask the question, “How are the processes

and contents of attention influenced by the conditions of task-based interdependency

found in those collectivities which we conventionally designate as organizations?”’ (Weick

1969: 26)



While I cringe at my earlier subordination of action to attention, since acting one’s

way into understanding is a hallmark of later work, I continue to use the idea that

capabilities, especially linguistic capabilities of categorizing, affect what one notices.

To understand organizations is to start with the premise that organizations are noteworthy for the forms of interdependent action that they favor and discourage. These

forms serve as repertoires that affect what people notice, affirm, label, and act upon

as well as the stories they construct retrospectively to make sense of their actions. As

forms of interdependence change (e.g. they become more or less heedful, they shift

from pooled interdependence to reciprocal interdependence), so too do perceptions,

actions, stories.

Continuing influence from the assumptions of continuity and repertoires is visible in several recent co-authored discussions where we argue that collective mindfulness is constituted by processes that enhance capability, and this enhancement then

allows earlier detection of weaker signals that unexpected events are unfolding, which

increases the likelihood of recovery and continuing reliable performance.



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Assumption of Evolutionary Epistemology

Nowhere are the pragmatics of poetics more evident than in my handling of evolutionary epistemology. I say that simply because evolution as I use it (and ‘use’ is the key word

here) consists of an immense debt to Donald Campbell’s thinking which I tend to use

as a platform rather than a vessel. Said differently, my thinking within an evolutionary

framework retains less of Campbell’s stunning nuance than does the thinking of people

like Azevedo (2002) and McKelvey (2002).

An evolutionary epistemology highlights a distinctive set of themes in organized

life. The context of evolution draws attention to such things as the inherent tension

between retention and variation, the wise but wasteful practice of blind variation, the

enactment of selection environments, imagination as simulated trial and error, life as

the experience of thrownness where higher variation rates and playing the percentages

increase chances for survival, requisite variety as a mechanism for adaptation that may

produce a better match between variation and selection, and artificial selection based

on deliberate intentions rather than natural selection based on exogenous determinants

as a potential feature of organizational life. Organizing emerges as an ongoing stream

of failed experiments and relentless mortality, updating, surprise, adaptations that

threaten to reduce adaptability, winnowing, and occasional convergence.

When an assumption about evolution is used to think about organizing, here, in Wanda

Orlikowski’s (1996) artful description, is what one sees. Orlikowski watched what happens

when people in a computer customer service center phased in a system of Lotus Notes to

keep better track of the problems that were being phoned in.

‘Each variation of a given form is not an abrupt or discrete event, neither is it, by itself,

discontinuous. Rather, through a series of ongoing and situated accommodations, adaptations, and alterations (that draw on previous variations and mediate future ones), sufficient modifications may be enacted over time that fundamental changes are achieved.

There is no deliberate orchestration of change here, no technological inevitability, no dramatic discontinuity, just recurrent and reciprocal variations in practice over time. Each

shift in practice creates the conditions for further breakdowns, unanticipated outcomes,

and innovations, which in turn are met with more variations. Such variations are ongoing; there is no beginning or end point in this change process.’ (Orlikowski 1996: 66)



How can I know what I think about evolution until I see what Wanda says? Notice

several features of these last two paragraphs. What I think comes in part from seeing

what I say, but also in part from seeing what others say. I pick a quotation that helps

me think, ponder why I think it is helpful, and then try to write in the spirit of what

I’ve just read. That’s mundane poetics executed through the use of others’ well-turned

phrases and arguments as ‘touchstones’ (Stinchcombe 1982) that shape rhythms,

connections, and extensions in my own writing.

That is an instance of style as theory. But it is also an instance of evolution itself. In the

recipe, how can I know what I think until I see what I say, saying equates to variation,

seeing equates to selection of meaning in what was said, and thinking equates to retention of an interpretation. The retained interpretation may then be imposed subsequently

to interpret similar saying (retention is credited) in order to construct cumulative understanding, test past labels for their validity, or generalize older labels to newer events.



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But the retained interpretation may also be set aside (retention is discredited) in

order to create newer meanings that produce greater differentiation, uncover previously taken-for-granted qualities, or raise new questions about what the story is.

Sensemaking is evolution writ small. Just as adaptation can preclude adaptability on

a larger scale, repetitive saying and seeing on a smaller scale can blunt sensitivity to

changing circumstances. The same old saying enacts the same old seeing which enacts

the same old thinking.

Poetics can be an antidote to that sameness, but it runs the opposite risk that adaptability will preclude adaptation. A system that produces only variation and remembers

nothing is not demonstrably better than a system that produces only retention and

remembers everything. The first system is overcome by events because efforts to produce

one variation after another soon lag behind current demands for a swift response. The

second system is overcome by events because repetition of older routines lags demands

for updating to address unique contingencies. The evolutionary wisdom that avoids such

a trap involves ambivalence, and that is the assumption to which we now turn.



Assumption of Ambivalence

A byproduct of my exposure to evolutionary thought has been a deepening appreciation of ambivalence. I know how that must sound. To make things appear even worse,

that appreciation extends even further to the assumption that ambivalence is the optimal compromise. The phrase is Donald Campbell’s (1965). The inspiration for the

phrase comes from William James.

First, the inspiration.

‘The whole story of our dealings with the lower wild animals is the history of our taking

advantage of the way in which they judge of everything by its mere label, as it were, so as to

ensnare or kill them. Nature, in them, has left matters in this rough way, and made them act

always in the manner which would be oftenest right. There are more worms unattached to

hooks than impaled upon them; therefore, on the whole, says Nature to her fishy children,

bite at every worm and take your chances. But as her children get higher, and their lives

more precious, she reduces the risks. Since what seems to be the same object may be now

a genuine food and now a bait; since in gregarious species each individual may prove to be

either the friend or the rival, according to the circumstances, of another; since any entirely

unknown object may be fraught with weal or woe, Nature implants contrary impulses to act

on many classes of things, and leaves it to slight alterations in the conditions of the individual

case to decide which impulse shall carry the day. Thus, greediness and suspicion, curiosity

and timidity, coyness and desire, bashfulness and vanity, sociability and pugnacity, seem to

shoot over into each other as quickly, and to remain in as unstable equilibrium, in the higher

birds and mammals as in man.’ (James 1890, Vol. 2: 392)

‘Curiosity and fear form a couple of antagonistic emotions liable to be awakened by the

same outward thing, and manifestly both useful to their possessor. The spectacle of their

alternation is often amusing enough, as in the timid approaches and scared wheelings

which sheep or cattle will make in the presence of some new object they are investigating.

I have seen alligators in the water act in precisely the same way towards a man seated on

the beach in front of them — gradually drawing near as long as he kept still, frantically



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careering back as soon as he made a movement. Inasmuch as new objects may always be

advantageous, it is better that an animal should not absolutely fear them. But, inasmuch

as they may also possibly be harmful, it is better that he should not be quite indifferent to

them either, but on the whole remaining on the qui vive, ascertain as much about them,

and what they may be likely to bring forth, as he can, before settling down to rest in their

presence. Some such susceptibility for being excited and irritated by the mere novelty, as

such, of any movable feature of the environment must form the instinctive basis of all

human curiosity.’ (James 1890, Vol. 2: 429)



Here is Campbell’s (1965) interpretation of James.

‘The presence in moral codes, proverb sets, and motivational systems of opposing values is

often interpreted as discrediting the value system by showing its logical inconsistency. This

is a misapplication of logic, and in multiple-contingency environments, the joint presence

of opposing tendencies has a functional survival value. Where each of two opposing tendencies has survival relevance, the biological solution seems to be an ambivalent alternation of expressions of each rather than the consistent expression of an intermediate

motivational state. Ambivalence, rather than averaging, seems the optimal compromise.’



In the world of wildland firefighting, one of my favorite microcosms of organizing,

ambivalence is visible in the minimal design for organizing that is practiced by fire

crews. This design was first formulated by the late Paul Gleason (1991) whose LCES

system prescribes that a crew 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. What’s interesting about an LCES design is that it 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. The crew is simultaneously confident and

cautious. Escape routes and safety zones preclude hubris. Lookouts and communication links preclude timidity. The combination of these four structures is respectful of

both knowledge and ignorance, which means that this configuration exhibits both the

ambivalence of wisdom and the wisdom of ambivalence.

Meacham (1990) underscores my conclusion in his discussion of wisdom.

‘The essence of wisdom . . . lies not in what is known but rather in the manner in which

that knowledge is held and in how that knowledge is put to use. To be wise is not to know

particular facts but to know without excessive confidence or excessive cautiousness . . . [to]

both accumulate knowledge while remaining suspicious of it, and recognizing that much

remains unknown, is to be wise.’ (pp. 185, 187)



Thus, ‘the essence of wisdom is in knowing that one does not know, in the appreciation that knowledge is fallible, in the balance between knowing and doubting’

(Meacham 1990: 210). Wisdom is a quality of thought that is animated by a dialectic in which the more one knows, the more one realizes the extent of what one does

not know.



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However, ambivalence should not be confused with indecisiveness. Ambivalence

concerns co-existence of competing tendencies, and can be seen as simultaneous

efforts to adapt yet retain adaptability and to treat past experience as a guide as well

as a trap. Oxymorons such as ‘controlled burn’ epitomize ambivalence, which suggests the odd possibility that systems so characterized may be highly effective in rapidly changing environments since they retain a wider range of ways to adapt. Jerry

Salancik (1977) worries that ‘commitment is too easy’ since any action that is public,

irreversible and volitional tends to be binding and prods people to come up with reasons that justify the binding action. Success in finding such reasons aids sensemaking,

but also predisposes to escalation, unwarranted persistence, and biased reasoning. If

commitment is ‘too easy’, then one way to make it ‘harder’ is through ambivalence.

Ambivalence weakens irreversibility, scales down the importance of the choice, and

provides a ready-to-hand justification (e.g. I did what I did in order to stay agile).



Assumption of Complexity

The idea that people need to complicate themselves and that it takes a complex organization to cope with a complex environment flies in the face of the counsel that people

need to focus, simplify, and keep it simple. Why all the clamor in favor of complication?

Why is it dangerous to dwell on simplicity?

I take seriously William Schutz’s (1979) argument that understanding progresses

through three stages: superficial simplicity, confused complexity, profound simplicity.

I am not against simplicity per se, but I am against mistaking superficial simplicity for

simplicity that is profound. That’s what I find fascinating about more effective high reliability organizations (HROs) (Weick et al. 1999). HROs strive for profound simplicity. They

understand that the means to move toward profound simplicity is through doubting the

completeness of their assumptions, through experimenting, and through entertaining

a wider variety of possibilities. They realize that when they distrust their simplifications

they will feel confused, but they also know that out of that confusion may come fuller

understanding of what they face.

When we are confused we pay closer attention to what is happening in order to

reduce the confusion. Later, all we remember is that this period of confusion was an

unpleasant experience. What we often fail to realize is that we also learned a lot of

details while struggling with the confusion. Those struggles and their consequences

comprise learning, even if momentarily they don’t feel that way. After a period of confused complexity, we often see that many of our initial simplifications were superficial,

but we also see that a handful of those initial simplifications still hold true, although for

different reasons than we first thought. And we also see that a handful of new simplifications help us make sense of the earlier confusion. These outcomes are the profound

simplicities that are sometimes labeled ‘wisdom’.

If people examine mindful HROs, those organizations often appear to be no more

complex than mindless organizations. What people miss, however, is the fact that

mindful organizations have struggled through periods of confused complexity on the

way to their profound simplicities (e.g. they looked closely at their own failures and

have examined them with candor). Mindless organizations, however, tend to settle for



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