Miracles and Nasty Surprises

Managers have to be willing to revise narratives as necessary, as emergence occurs, as context changes, as situations change.  And note, narrative is not merely telling stories.  Narrative is providing enough ascribed coherence so that the people hearing the story, the rest of the audience that’s part of the group with you, has got some kind of a potential willingness to act.   The purpose of narrative is to provide the illusion of overcoming uncertainty. Uncertainty is a lack of potential willingness to act.  If one is willing to act, one is acting as if one is certain. Ambiguity is something else. You can have a willingness to act in an ambiguous situation.  You are not acting as if there was uncertainty because you were willing to act.  By definition, one is taking an action that’s as if one were certain. 

Narrative is about trying to situate the possibility space for the audience so that they can see what are referred to as affordances, the opportunities that are present in the adjacent possibles.   The only things that matter for the next action are the adjacent possibles.  To set up a vision, a mission, something that is out there to be aimed at and not have a way of relating that vision to what the next steps are, to what the adjacent possibles are, is a nice story, but it gives no guidance about what to do next.  The next steps are adjacent possibles, and they have to be situated in the possibility space.