Ubiquitous Ambiguity (Part One)
Life is ambiguous, isn’t it? There you are working away and you find out something that can have more than one interpretation. Someone – perhaps a manager or a customer or a client – says they want to talk to you privately. What could that mean? What’s the feeling that’s right there? Is it good news or bad? Or, you do something great for your company and everyone appreciates it. One year later, however, that same thing you did is viewed undesirably. How can this be you wonder?
Ubiquity
I usually save the takeaway for the end. This time I am going to unambiguously lead with it. Ready?
Everything is ambiguous. Master it, and enjoy success.
Though it means open to more than one interpretation, my own definition is “Ambiguity is the normal state where everything is open to more than one interpretation no matter what it is or when it did or will happen.” So how much ambiguity surrounds you in business and life? We will start with life and you will get a sense of what I mean.
Light Water
What is light? For a long time, light was thought to be a particle. Simple, what else could sunlight be? Well not so for in the 1600’s a physicist named Grimaldi discovered diffraction – the bending of light around corners or through tiny slits – and he reasoned that light behaves like a wave too. Today physicists understand light to be a particle that acts like a wave. That kind of makes light – one of the primary sources of life – ambiguous, doesn’t it?
Now, what is water? Water can have three states: solid, liquid, and gas. When water is in its liquid state, however, it can have varying densities. This is an anomaly. Water can actually exist in two different states – and I don’t mean Alaska and Hawai’i. It can be a low-density liquid at low pressures and a high-density liquid at high pressures. Researchers now say water can exist as two very different liquids. That kind of makes water – another one of the primary sources of life and something that makes up over 60% of you – ambiguous. Here's a question: do you feel made up of heavy or light water?
Play At Work
Work is work, right? There are things you have to do, people you must deal with, and competitive forces to contend with. Sometimes, it feels like running in a swimming pool with resistance everywhere. Moreover, study the lives of the people who write books like “The 4-Hour…” book series and similar time-constrained texts and you find, paradoxically, that they are constantly working. Your author here works day and night plus weekends and often on holidays, while preaching work / family / life balance to student interns and clients. So just what exactly is going on here?
The difference between some workers and others is for some people work really is simply toil. They see no choice in the matter. An obligation demands work at night and on holidays or else! Worse, their views and opinions are marginalized, if heard at all. Just. Get. The Job. Done.
For others, work is actually play. Yes, play – as in sheer joy. All of it, from start to finish, is pure fun. Even the tedious stuff most resist – completing expense reports, asking about an unpaid invoice, or asking for a survey to be completed – is viewed as an enjoyable opportunity. How can that be? It is work after all. And yet at the same time it is play. Seriously, is your work play for you? How could it be, if it's not already?
Perceptual Opening Close
As human beings we need two things that are completely ambiguous – light and water. Given that, it stands to reason that ambiguity would be experienced in our day-to-day living, specifically our work and play. What you do with that is all a matter of perception or attitude. Ponder this quote:
“The difference between work and play is only a matter of attitude. Work, fully done, is play.”
– Gerald May, Psychiatrist and Theologian
We have covered it all – light, water, work, play, perception – what else is there? We’ve shed light on work and play and we've unabashedly used water imagery – running in a swimming pool – to deepen our perception of what's ubiquitous in business and life: ambiguity.
Now, how could there possibly be more on this topic? Just wait until Part Two.
Here's to you and your awesome future.
Until then, keep your feet on the board and keep riding your wave!
Robert J. Khoury
CEO Agile Rainmakers