Paradox and management

Reality in the first and in the second sense

The world out there knows no paradoxes and no contradictions. It is as it is. Our construction of the world, by contrast, is shaped by distinctions — and those differences produce the contradictions. In each of us individually, but above all in more complex systems such as organisations, which are shaped by multipolar indeterminacies: centralise or decentralise.

The normal state is oscillation between the poles of the distinction. Get up, stay in bed. A decision arrests that oscillation.

But arrests are the exception.

Hence the phenomenon that every decision “immediately awakens its opposite” — Detlef Pollack, loosely after Goethe. An energy arises against the decision, in organisations as much as in political systems and in individual people.

Translated into everyday leadership

Reality in organisations is described through opposites. Managing them means knowing that there can be no right decision valid for all time, only a temporary one.

That figure of thought relieves and burdens at once. It relieves, because deciding is then allowed to be a light and above all reversible matter. It burdens, because it brings the responsibility to check whether you are deciding the relevant distinction at all — and whether a decision brings more use than continued oscillation. Handling your own construction of the world transparently and responsively is a core capability for decision-makers.

The logical and the experienced paradox

Elena Esposito distinguished the logical paradox from the experienced, pragmatic ones. The logical kind cannot be decided and puts us before larger problems. It arises when a distinction is applied to the underlying category: good and evil are terms of the category morality — so is moral thinking good or evil? Detlef Pollack showed the same in the sociology of religion: everything transcendent can only be discussed immanently. Does transcendence still exist, then, if it can only be grasped within immanence?

This form meets us in organisations too. It is easy to observe in so-called self-organisation, which through a multitude of procedural rules leaves the self little room to organise and, following Kühl, erects a strict hierarchy of bureaucracy. Or in the attempt to resolve dissatisfaction with participation formats by means of a participation format. A staff meeting on the subject: we need to become more creative. And, quite practically, the demand in a relationship that someone should please bring flowers of their own accord.

The broad concept of paradox describes the problems management usually faces well. Whether and how the narrower, logical concept can be made useful for organisational action is the question I took away with me.