Polarity Management
In this essay, I wish to build on my previous presentations regarding Polarity Management by introducing several concepts found in Barry Johnson’s (2020) more recent book on Polarity Management. Called And: Making a Difference by Leveraging, Polarity, Paradox or Dilemma, this book expands on or clarifies concepts presented in his original, best-selling Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems (1996). In concluding this essay, I consider ways in which his model of polarities relates to my concept of Essence
Type of Issue and Essence
Barry Johnson (2020, p. 39) considers it very important to identify polarities—and not treat them as “solvable” problems:
“When an organization treats a polarity as if it were a problem to solve, it will reduce the attainability, speed, and sustainability of the “solution” they are trying to accomplish. When an organization can see a key underlying polarity within a difficulty or set of difficulties, it will increase the attainability, speed, and sustainability of the desired outcome.”
However, Johnson also notes that not all difficult issues being addressed are polarities. They can be problems. Johnson distinguishes between problems that can be solved and polarities that must be managed. While I appreciate the distinction between drawn by Johnson (2020, pp. 223-230), I wish to draw attention to a distinction between not just problems and polarities, but also puzzles, problems, messes, dilemmas, polarities and mysteries. This is a distinction that I drew in the first essay in this series on Essential and Essence. While Johnson is hinting at this more multi-faceted distinction in the title of his book (including paradox and dilemma in the title), and in several of the case studies he provides, I wish to return to the distinctions I have drawn and briefly contrast each of the issue types to polarity and to the matter of Essence.
Puzzles: the majority of issues that we address on a daily basis are easily addressed if we are knowledgeable about the matter at hand and if we have sufficient resources to address this issue. There is a specific solution to a puzzle–and we know when it has been solved. As Johnson (2020, p. 223) has noted, these are issues that are not ongoing. They have an endpoint and come with a correct answer. They are usually peripheral to that which is the Essence of the system in which the puzzle has emerged. We may find considerable satisfaction in solving the many puzzles that emerge every day in our home or work life but must not be “lured” into believing that these puzzles are all there is to be addressed.
Problems: Much of what Johnson identifies as a problem would be considered in my scheme to be a puzzle. I believe that problems do not have clear solutions; rather, they contain multiple contradictory and interconnected elements that do not lend this issue to direct, predictable solutions. Johnson is leaning toward this perspective when stating that “problems” can have “two or more right answers that are independent” (Johnson, 2020, p. 223). If the answers are interdependent then Johnson considers them to be polarities (Johnson, 2020, p. 225). However, I consider problems to be based primarily in complex system – which as Miller and Page (2007) have indicated contain elements that are inevitably interdependent. Most mid-21st Century systems are complex rather than just complicated (many parts that operate independently). If the issue being addressed does contain two or more independent parts (unlikely) then I would consider this issue to be composed of two or more puzzles –rather than a problem.
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