{"id":251,"date":"2008-10-10T15:24:47","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T15:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php\/2008\/10\/10\/does_god_play_d\/"},"modified":"2008-10-10T15:24:47","modified_gmt":"2008-10-10T15:24:47","slug":"does_god_play_d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"Does God Play Dice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modern Physics has long done away with the notion that we can know anything with
\ncertainty yet most management theories and practice seem to be based on a Newtonian
\nview of ‘knowability’. True leadership recognises that we never know what to do but
\nthis very uncertainty demands that we must act decisively.<\/em><\/p>\n

As I write this The Age<\/a> reports that overnight
\nthe Dow
\nJones<\/a> Industrial Average
\nfell below 9000 points for the first time since 2003. Maybe by the time you
\nread this it will have fallen below 8000. Maybe it will have recovered to be
\nover 10,000. As I heard Craig
\nJames<\/a> say at a business breakfast this morning, “No
\none knows.”<\/p>\n

In all my experience as a consultant, the question I am most often asked is “How
\ndo we know<\/em> what we should do?” This question comes in many forms. Sometimes
\nmy client acts as though I know exactly the solution to their problem – after
\nall that’s what they pay me for isn’t it. Sometimes I feel like
\ntelling them not only do I have no idea of the solution, I’m not even
\nsure what the problem is. Unfortunately I more often fall into the trap of
\nbelieving the client’s trust in my omniscience is well placed. I believe
\nthat I should know the answer or at least, if I don’t. I should act as
\nthough I do. I justify this by convincing myself that if I work hard enough,
\nstudy the client’s situation in enough detail and read enough of what ‘the
\nexperts’ say, both THE PROBLEM and THE ANSWER will become clear to me.<\/p>\n

It is at times like this that I forget the greatest service I can give to
\nmy client is to not know<\/em>. My client knows their business and their organisation
\nbetter than I ever can. When I feel like I have to know, or have to look like
\nI know I can’t ask the dumb questions that everyone wants to ask but
\nno one dares. With grateful acknowledgment to a dear colleague, I call this
\nthe Colombo model of consulting.<\/p>\n

\nThe same is true for leadership. It takes courage to admit you don’t
\nknow what to do yet perhaps the greatest failures of leadership throughout
\nhistory have been made by those who acted out of this fear. In the current
\neconomic situation, doing nothing is not an option. Global treasury officials
\nand financial chiefs must act in the full knowledge that there is no higher
\nauthority to which they can turn who can provide them with just the right settings
\nto avert a catastrophe, History will judge them harshly if they get it wrong.<\/p>\n

This
\nbelief arises from the triumph of the industrial age where we have come to
\nthink of organisations as machines.<\/p>\n

\nAs Danah Zohar puts it:<\/p>\n

Classical physics transmuted the living cosmos of Greek and medieval times,
\na cosmos filled with purpose and intelligence and driven by the love of God
\nfor the benefit of humans, into a dead, clockwork machine … Things moved
\nbecause they were fixed and determined; cold silence pervaded the once-teeming
\nheavens. Human beings and their struggles, the whole of consciousness, and
\nlife itself were irrelevant to the workings of the vast universal machine” The
\nQuantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics,
\n1990<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Quantum Leadership<\/h3>\n

It seems like more than a lifetime ago that I completed my first degree which
\nwas in Physics. An area of knowledge that I spent 10 years teaching and which
\nstill excites me. In the last act of my last lecture in my undergraduate degree,
\nmy lecturer wrote in letters filling the whole board:<\/p>\n

\n

\nGOD PLAYS DICE<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\nThis was a reference to Einstein<\/a>’s
\ndisagreement with Neils
\nBohr<\/a> and Werner
\nHeisenberg<\/a> over the validity of Quantum
\nMechanics<\/a> at the fifth
\nSolvay Conference<\/a> in 1927. By this time, Einstein’s
\ntheory of General
\nRelativity<\/a> was well known in the Physics world. On the other
\nhand Bohr and Heisenberg’s Quantum Mechanics was very new. Central to
\nQuantum Mechanics is the probabilistic nature of the universe. That is that
\nobjects behave according to a well defined probability but their individual
\nactions are completely unpredictable. An electron<\/a>, for example, could spend
\nmost of its time close to an atom on the page on which you are reading this.
\nHowever, there is a small, but not zero, probability that in one moment it
\nwill be on the other side of the universe without ever having been anywhere
\nin between here and there. We cannot predict when an electron might choose
\nto jump such a great distance just that there is a chance it will.<\/p>\n

\nIn 1927 Einstein could not bring himself to believe this disorderly behaviour
\nand made his famous statement “I
\ncannot believe that God plays dice<\/a>.” Although
\nhe appears to have eventually come to an accommodation with Quantum Mechanics,
\nmany commentators believe he wasted the second half of his life attempting
\nto develop a theory that unified Relativity and Quantum Physics. Today there
\nare about as many physicists who reject quantum theory as the number who believe
\nin a flat earth.<\/p>\n

\nYou may or may not find this interesting. The point I want to make though is
\nthe implications this has for management and leadership. When we lead and
\nmanage, is it possible, at least in theory, to analyse every problem or are
\nwe, like God, merely playing dice. <\/p>\n

\nMany people I talk to find this concept quite discomfiting. We have, most of
\nus, been brought up with the notion of Scientific
\nManagement<\/a>. That is, with
\nappropriate analytical tools and a sufficient level of application, we can
\ndesign the optimum organisation with the best possible processes to meet the
\nchallenges that face us. We can design instruments that measure our performance,
\nmeasure potential employees skill sets, aptitude and psychological suitability
\nfor the tasks we know need doing. Finally we can determine the market requirements
\nand design products and services that perfectly dovetail with them. That we
\ndon’t is due to our own failings rather than the failure of theory.<\/p>\n

This view of the world has served us well for several centuries – as
\nclassical physics did up to the nuclear age. But in the same way that classical
\nphysics is inadequate to describe and predict the complex interactions of
\nsub-atomic particles that have led to a revolution in technology, management
\nand leadership based on that same classical science is inadequate to deal
\nwith a world where information and capital can travel at the speed of light.<\/p>\n

\nThe failures of traditional (think bureaucratic) organisations didn’t
\nmatter when the pace of change was so much slower. But, as Margaret
\nWheatley<\/a> points out:<\/p>\n

Our seventeenth century organisations are crumbling. We have prided ourselves
\n, in all these centuries since Newton and Descartes, on the triumph of reason,
\non the absence of magic. Yet we, like the best magicians of old, have been
\nhooked on manipulation. For three centuries, we’ve been planning, predicting,
\nand analyzing the world. We’ve held on to an intense belief in cause
\nand effect. We’ve raised planning to highest of priestcrafts and imbued
\nnumbers with absolute power. We look to numbers to describe our economic
\nhealth, our productivity, our physical well-being. We’ve developed
\ngraphs and charts and plans to take us into the future, revering them as
\nancient mariners did their chart books. Without them, we’d be lost,
\nadrift among the dragons. We have been, after all, no more than sorcerers,
\nthe master magicians of our time.” Leadership and the New Science 1999.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nSimilarly Clegg and Hardy observe:<\/p>\n

David Silverman’s (1971) The Theory of Organizations … interpretative
\nemphasis countered the functionalist view. It opened a Pandora’s box,
\nreleasing actors as opposed to systems, social construction as opposed to
\nsocial determinism; interpretative understanding as opposed to a logic of
\ncausal explanation; plural definitions of situations rather than the singular
\ndefinition articulated around organizational goals. Studying Organization
\n1999<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nIn the same way the Quantum Physics has required scientists to learn and
\nadopt a whole raft of new thinking, so must leaders, managers and participants
\nin organisations.<\/p>\n

\nWe can no longer think of our organisations as machines reducible to their
\ncomponent parts. We must think of them as networks of relationships. No longer
\nis it adequate to dream that, like the great Watchmaker, we can control all
\nthe levers a dials and set the precise course our organisation will take.
\nRather, like a gardener, we can cultivate, water and fertilize. <\/p>\n

\nPerhaps more importantly, we can no longer believe that one person determines the destiny of an organisation. Perhaps this is the remaining, yet most enduring vestige of the industrial age. A belief rather than dying out as its usefulness diminishes has paradoxically become the supreme article of faith of modern commerce. <\/p>\n

\nThe central lessons from modern science though are: <\/p>\n