One of the things I wrote in my manifesto, “Purposive Drift: making it up as we along” was this:
“We need a language of the human. A language that recognises that life is more open, much messier, more ambiguous, more complex, more mysterious, more surprising, and filled with more possibilities for good or for ill, than the rationality of the machine allows.”
I was reminded of this after reading an entry on Johnnie Moore’s weblog, “Waterfalls and Chaos”, which led me to a paper by Jeffrey Conklin & William Weil,”Wicked Problems: Naming the Pain in Organizations”.
As they indicate, we need a language of the human because machine style language is not only inaccurate, but it hurts:
“One of the sources of pain in organizations, especially for managers and project leaders, is the gap between the linear and orderly progress you and your group are supposed to be making, and the chaotic reality in which you operate. The power of the distinction wicked problems is the freedom you gain by knowing that chaos is inherent in solving the problems you face. With this knowledge, the chaos does not decrease, but you can let things be the way they are, and stop feeling like something is wrong with you or your co-workers.”
As they argue earlier in the paper:
“The natural pattern of human problem solving appears chaotic on the surface, but it is the chaos of an earthquake or the breaking of an ocean wave. It reveals deeper forces and flows that have their own order and pattern. The non-linear pattern of activity that expert designers follow gives us fresh insight into what happens when we work on a complex problem. It reveals that in normal problem-solving behavior, we may seem to wander about, making only halting progress towards the solution. This non-linear process is not a defect, not a sign of stupidity or lack of training, but rather the mark of a natural learning process. It suggests that humans are oriented more toward learning (a process that leaves us changed) than toward problem solving (a process focused on changing our surroundings).”
So why can’t we celebrate our freedom instead of trying to push people into the straightjacket of machine style thinking? A question, I suspect, that has uncomfortable answers.