The Case of Not Knowing | Leadership Short Story #2
This month's short story is about dealing with paradox and being comfortable with not knowing.
MELONIE HAD always believed there was a right answer and a wrong answer in every situation. She had always prided herself on finding the right answer. She had a nose for what would work, or wouldn’t, in any situation, and she had very seldom made a mistake. In fact, she honestly couldn’t think of any. She hadn’t always gone by the book, she was always ready to admit that, but her instincts had always worked for her. It had got her to where she was today.
Today, she found herself hesitating. It was not a familiar response. She sat in her car, in the underground parking, for a full ten seconds before she moved to open the door. She hesitated again, and noticed that she was double-checking her approach. This was not like her.
The car started beeping. It wanted something. She realised she still had her foot on the brake and had not engaged park mode. The vehicle had sensed that, and thrown a hissy fit when she had moved to open the door. She pulled the door shut and pressed the buttons for park and handbrake. It went quiet and the lights faded.
In fact it wasn’t her car, but her husband’s—a giant Volvo XC90. They had bought it, if they were honest, for the annual family holiday, and now she found herself using it for her commute. This had been at his suggestion, because it would keep the mileage down, while he used her much sportier Audi A5 for his commute. She had resigned herself to it, for now. There were more important things to deal with between them.
She refocused her attention. Today, she had to manage a disagreement between two of her reports, Kantha and Rupert. The data had come in from the field about the efficacy of a product, yet the interpretations about what they should do were different. They had produced what they thought would be a headache tablet; it was not doing what it should, but it was having the unintended consequence of relieving anxiety.
“We should just pivot and test for the anxiety effects,” Rupert had said.
“You can’t do that,” said Kantha, “there are too many risks. You have to start again from the ground up.”
It had developed into a full-blown argument, one that ended in the two sides—Rupert’s marketing team and Kantha’s research department—not talking to each other, not only on that, but on other matters too. The standoff had spread to other divisions, and everybody was taking sides. The country president had given her an ultimatum to sort it out.
If there was one thing else that Melonie knew, it was that she could not be seen to be taking sides. She had done this only recently. She had gone with the person whom she had thought was right; the other person had complained, and the company had come down on their side. Now she had a warning letter on her file. As it had turned out, she was right. Duh. In this case, she was firmly on Kantha’s side. She couldn’t possibly see how they could just pivot. However, she needed to be careful.
Another car came in and parked two spaces to her right. It was Penny, the country president. Melonie wasn’t ready, and she didn’t care for having a conversation in the elevator, so she pretended she was on her phone. The messages had been piling up, so she needed to deal with them anyway.
One was from Mack, the business school lecturer. Melonie had remembered something from one of his classes that she had taken months ago. She had had a sense it might be relevant in this situation, and she had sent him a question. That was two days ago. He had finally replied.
Her dealings with Mack had been during one of those business simulations that they had made them do. The challenge had been to test whether it was better to play it safe by sticking to the rules, or take risks by sometimes breaking the rules. In the exercise, the rule-breaker had won, by a big margin. Melonie had known which side she was on, for sure. The risk-taker.
“But what if he hadn’t pulled it off,” someone had asked. “Where would he be then?” The class had argued.
“Was it really that breaking the rules worked for him?” asked Mack. “Or was he in fact playing by the rules, just his own set of rules?”
“Good point,” said another student.
“I call this the quantum parallel,” said Mack.
“What’s that?”
Mack explained, “When scientists discovered quantum particles, they learned that light can be both particle and wave, and it shows up as one or the other according to what the observer wants to measure. In the same way, people see what they want to see. They can find evidence to support any argument.”
The challenger in the class had thought about this for a while, and said, “Like I believe going by the book works for me, and he believes taking risks works for him?”
“Exactly,” said Mack, “and you’re both right.”
“Huh?”
“When you’re right, it doesn’t have to mean the other person must be wrong. They can still be right at the same time.”
“So I could be following the rules, and it’s working for me, and he could be breaking the rules, and it’s working for him.”
“Exactly,” repeated Mack.
“So my being right about one thing doesn’t mean he has to be wrong. We can both be right.”
“At the same time,” emphasised Mack.
Now Melonie read Mack’s typed message to the question she had sent him last night: What if both answers are right and it’s just a matter of perspective?
She saw that he was online, and she typed: What if?
She watched, and half a minute later he started typing. It took him a while. He probably made a few edits, because it came through as only one sentence: Yes, what possibilities open up for you if you consider that?
She typed: Opposing views and strategies can both be true—or both be false—all at the same time. In order for one to be right, the other doesn’t have to be wrong. I see that it’s a perspective you can choose.
Mack: Precisely.
Melonie: It’s not easy though. I see it for an instant, and then it slips away. He typed, then stopped, then went offline, then came online again. She typed: OK, so how does this apply to situations where there’s hard data, where there’s clearly a right and a wrong?
Mack replied: Look at how much data there is in the world and yet how people still fight over it. Does data really have one single interpretation, or many? Sure, one plus one equals two, but what does two mean? Is it a good two, or a bad two? That’s where the trouble starts.
Melonie: I guess. People will argue over the two that they both have in front of them—whether it’s a good two or a bad two.
Mack: Exactly. So does the world need more data, or a greater tolerance for paradox?
Melonie: I get it. Being able to tolerate paradox, instead of seeing life like a multiple-choice test, with only two options, A or B!
Mack: It’s A. Smiley face.
Melonie: I thought so too. Ha ha.
Mack: Seriously, the possibility of not knowing does not sit well in today’s corporate environment.
Melonie asked if she could call, and he gave a thumbs up. She dialled, and described the scenario. He listened, and when she finished, remained quiet for so long that she asked if he was still there. “Just thinking of the right question,” he replied. She waited. He said, “How do you make a decision then, if it’s not just about winning the argument, protecting your turf, or being right?”
Melonie reflected for almost as long. Finally, she said, “Hmm, maybe it could be based on what matters most in the situation.”
“Which could be up for debate just as much as the goodness of the two,” said Mack
“True,” said Melonie, “or maybe just the recognition that you could both be right will lead to a different outcome on its own. Maybe that’s enough to get you to work together.
“Yes, there’s that Jewish proverb, Of the two options, choose the third.”
“One plus one equals three!” exclaimed Melonie.
“Exactly,” said Mack. “The third option is the one that you have to make up, together. It’s something that you don’t yet know.”
“Hmm, maybe that’s it. The third option, the one you make up together.”
“Yes, it’s a new path entirely. One you have to choose to step out onto. I guess you could say, it’s the path of not knowing.”
“That scares the hell out of me,” said Melonie. She paused, then added, “But I don’t have much choice. I’m in a bit of a corner here, so I’ll give it a go.”
She brought them in and let them each state their case, then said, “I’ve heard you both and I think you’re both right. I also think you could both be wrong.”
They both slumped, and looked at each other, then back at her. She didn’t know what would come out of her mouth next. She heard herself say, “Kantha, I would like you to present to me, by the end of the day, how you could make Rupert’s approach work, and Rupert, you need to come with some ideas about why Kantha’s cautions are justified.” She paused. A new idea came to her. She decided that while she was trusting herself to be in the space of not knowing, she would take it further. She said, “In fact, you don’t need me. You will present to each other, and by the end of tomorrow make a decision about the way forward, and come and tell me what that decision is.”