“I mean what’s the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?”

I’m quoting from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Won’t be a moment.

“That’s right!” shouted Vroomfondel, “we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”

These are the words of two (fictional) philosophers rejecting computer, Deep Thought‘s role in resolving the answer to life, the Universe and everything. They are torn. They sort of want the answer, but they also desire perpetual complexity and uncertainty, so they can carry on wondering about what it might be. Such is humans’ complicated relationship with ‘knowing’.

I haven’t blogged much recently. Sometimes I wonder how I can think intensely about so many things and then not have anything to say about them. Part of the reason is that they are usually very complex things and the conclusions I take from them aren’t simple, certain ones. They don’t feel concise and clear enough to become a post. And that’s what people like, right? Clarity of thought.

I realised that the thing I really want to blog about is exactly that: the role of clarity in complex processes.

I’m a ‘strategist’, for want of a better word – and strategy is often seen as reductionism: the process of distilling complexity into a nice, singular statement of purpose. That’s never really worked for me, because too much distillation removes richness. Simplicity and clarity still play a huge role, just a more unstable, temporary one than in the past.

We’re drawn to clarity and certainty, because, to quote this article (ht Uwe):

“Certainty is the feeling of confidence we have when we’ve figured things out. Our physiology is geared to move us quickly to eliminate the uncomfortable tension of not knowing”

It’s often the role of a strategist to ease this tension. But as the article continues:

“Many complex problems can only be tackled with experimentation because they do not converge to definitive solutions.”

And in case you hadn’t noticed, the world gets more complex every day, which puts conflicting pressures on strategy. On one hand, it means the need is greater to shield people from overwhelming possibilities and offer clarity of thought. On the other hand, it reduces the integrity and stability of simplicity and certainty.

To complete my trilogy of quotes from Mr Cadsby, he goes on to recommend the adoption of what he calls ‘provisional truth’:

“Provisional truth requires that we think of our explanations as hypotheses — always subject to replacement based on new information or alternative ways of structuring existing information.”

This reminded me of something I read on Noah’s blog about ‘semantic placeholders’. Basically: terms that aren’t right, but do a better job of moving us forward than waiting for impossible linguistic perfection. Which feels bang on.

This is the ultimate truth; irreversible, protean complexity requires that we accept simplicity and certainty as a temporary vice only; a cognitive stepping stone that shifts the moment we move from it. Bit of a bastard isn’t it. It threatens the very core of what a strategist often stands for. It means that simplicity can never be the end of the process. It is merely a temporary expression of clarity in a complex on-going process.

A good strategist needs to battle with contradictory mindsets. She must match her confidence and intellect with humility and doubt. Because the frameworks we create are only temporary scaffolding that require reassembling as we go.

Like the scatty philosophers, Vroomfondel and Majikthise, we need to create ‘rigidly defined areas of doubt’. Enough structure for clarity and decision, but enough flex for constant adaptation. Although I can’t be certain.

‘We,’ said Majikthise, ‘are Philosophers.’
‘Though we may not be,’ said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger.