Comments on: Is Paradox The New Paradigm?

By: John

John — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 04:41:35 +0000

Hello Rob,

I don’t know why you’re calling this notion “paradox”. Consider:

“Generally in warfare, keeping a nation intact is best, destroying a nation second best; keeping an army intact is best, destroying an army second best; keeping a battalion intact is best, destroying a battalion second best; keeping a company intact is best, destroying a company second best; keeping a squad intact is best, destroying a squad second best. Therefore, to gain a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence; to subjugate the enemy’s army without doing battle is the highest of excellence. Therefore, the best warfare strategy is to attack the enemy’s plans, next is to attack alliances, next is to attack the army, and the worst is to attack a walled city. Laying siege to a city is only done when other options are not available.” – Sun Tzu in The Art of War

Sun Tzu understood the advantages of an indirect strategy, what you’re calling paradox, back in 5th Century B.C.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 04:18:36 +0000

Hi Rob, I’m going to have to disagree slightly with your post. Paradoxes are useful, as you noted, not so much because you need to resolve them (though unlike contradictions, all paradoxes are in theory resolvable), but because they force you to take a look at your assumptions. As with most things, asking the right question is the quickest way to get to the answer.

Resolving, or even attempting to resolve paradoxes are useful IF you have the time for them, because they help to clarify any underlying assumptions. For any given subject, there should always be (in theory, anyways), an “optimal” path – the problem is that the search area is so large, and the rules of the system so unclear, that it is generally impossible to find the optimal path. By looking at the underlying assumptions, we can at least make a guess as to whether or not they reflec the underlying world that we are operating in. If not, then we need new assumptions.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 16:56:49 +0000

Hi Rob, I think your posts over the past several weeks have been really good. Perhaps you should have been under the gun all along! As for paradox being the new paradigm, it’s always been the real paradigm; people just want to adopt others to make things appear simpler than they are. It’s Johnnie Moore’s “Complex vs. Complicated” dichotomy that I mentioned in that Mr. T post.

Back to your “focusing on the right thing” idea, that’s one of the reasons I’ve always liked a Balanced Scorecard approach. It takes one’s thinking from “what financial targets am I trying to hit” to “what customer-facing improvements should I make” to “what processes do I have to change to effect those customer improvements” to “what do I have to learn to create and manage those processes”. Everyone up and down the organization can tell how their own actions are effecting the central goals of the organization.

Cheers,

Mike

By: Wayne Hall

Wayne Hall — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 16:46:48 +0000

True, that. I think paradox is also a very useful concept in the pursuit of knowledge in general. There’s something about the human mind that can make sense of seeming senselessness. If science is increasingly about information, then there’s a whole lot of interesting discovery ahead. My two cents.

By: Abhijit Nadgouda

Abhijit Nadgouda — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 15:56:45 +0000

Very well written. Customers should be the primary concern of businesses, and profit secondary. Only if the primary is satisfied will the secondary have a chance.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 15:34:29 +0000

This reminds me of the ald saw that says do what you like and the money will follow.