Wisdom of Isdom

The Isdom of the Wisdom Society: Embodying time as the heartland of humanity (Part #12)

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The Imagination Lab study does an excellent job of pointing to the practical learnings from the interactive dynamics associated with jazz improvisation in groups (a theme of studies by others, notably John Kao. Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity. Ken Kamoche, Miguel Pina e Cunha Minimal structures: From jazz improvisation to product innovation. Organization Studies, Sept-Oct, 2001):

Jazz, as the exemplification of aesthetic awareness of the other combined with an ethic of authenticity, has been proposed as a model for a pluralistic and multicultural world (Welsh, 1999). The open musical conversations, intense exchange and respect for the other musicians inherent in jazz is a metaphor for how people of vastly different faiths and backgrounds can interrelate and create community together.

This strongly suggests that collective wisdom has much to do with how people "play" together -- a ludic quality (cf Johan Huizenga. Homo Ludens, 1950). For the individual it would then be a question of how indeed the individual "played" with insights and perceptions and of whether there were more fruitful ways of playing with them (see Enhancing the Quality of Knowing through Integration of East-West metaphors, 2000). There is a vast distinction between trivial play and that to which Hermann Hesse alludes (Magister Ludi: the Glass Bead Game, 1946). Johan Roos and Bart Victor even see strategy making as serious play (Towards a Model of Strategy Making as Serious Play, 1999) and have franchised a process for business strategy to bring the creativity, the exuberance, and the inspiration of play to the serious concerns of adults in the business world. (The Science of LEGO SERIOUS PLAY)

Whatever the leads from jazz however, much remains to be discovered about how (and under what conditions) this "play" engenders "wise" strategic action in the face of dilemmas typical of the world as it is framed today. It is perhaps here that the games noted earlier, whether real or imagined, are indicative of dynamic support structures of emergent insight. But much may depend on how the games are effectively internalized by the players -- rather than being purely external exercises in skill and virtuosity. Humour may also be vital to such play -- as implied by the Zen and Taoist concerns with crazy wisdom.

It is in this sense that wisdom is then to a high degree in the process of co-creation itself -- not in the product thereof. It is in the process of interweaving and interplay that builds, sustains and explores associations -- well-modelled in some respects by the improvisation of jazz. The contrast has also been stressed in the process of poetry-making of which any poem produced may offer only faint echoes (Poetry-making and Policy-making: Arranging a Marriage between Beauty and the Beast, 1993)

Aspects of these questions in relation to "practical wisdom" have been explored in a most valuable way by Matt Statler, Johan Roos and Bart Victor of the Imagination Lab (Dear Prudence: an essay on practical wisdom in strategy making). They take as their point of departure the Aristotelian concept of prudence as practical wisdom:

According to Aristotle, practical wisdom involves the virtuous capacity to make decisions and take actions that promote the 'good life' for the 'polis'. We explore contemporary interpretations of this concept in literature streams adjacent to strategy and determine that practical wisdom can be developed by engaging in interpretative dialogue and aesthetically-rich experience. With these elements in view, we re-frame strategy processes as occasions to develop the human capacity for practical wisdom....We then re-cast the importance of strategy processes as an occasion to develop the practical wisdom required to take appropriate action in situations when decision factors are clouded by ambiguity and uncertainty....

To recapitulate: practical wisdom is not science because it deals with unpredictable, dynamic aspects of human social life. On the other hand, it is does not refer to the kind of clever intelligence that enables people to survive or achieve advantage through cunning. Instead, it refers to the capacity to make judgments and take actions that are good. Following the arguments outlined above, a process-oriented notion of the ethical 'good' appears necessarily to involve creative processes of dialogue and interpretation. With this definition of the 'good' in mind, our guiding question concerning ontology and intentionality leads us to inquire how practial wisdom might be developed among strategists. Interestingly, our answer to this question is one that has been offered throughout the Western tradition, but which has surfaced only recently and somewhat on the margins of the mainstream strategy literature. In this section of the essay, we explore aesthetically-rich experience as a category of activity through which strategists may become more practically wise.

Wisdom imbued with aesthetic qualities may then be associated with the "pattern that connects" and with bridging between cognitive incommensurables as an exemplification of the ecology of which they are expressions. It is thus the essence of that cognitive diversity that is capable of sustaining appreciation of cultural and biological diversity and ensuring strategies for its appropriate management. As such, metaphor plays a key role as a transdisciplinary vehicle vital to strategic thinking (Metaphors as Transdisciplinary Vehicles of the Future, 1991). As suggested elsewhere (Metaphor as an Unexplored Catalytic Language for Global Governance, 1993):

It is not that traditional policy models are ineffective or inadequate. The difficulty is rather in the incompatibility of models, however useful in different specialized domains, and the resulting weaknesses which emerge in any supposedly integrated strategy. Suspicion concerning integrative models has become a wise precaution.

Beyond any structural modifications, the key to the success of future strategies appears to lie in the imaginative manner in which valid, but seemingly incompatible, initiatives are woven together. The challenge is highlighted by the absence of models adequate to the reconciliation of "centralized" and "market" economic strategies in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe. There are no available models because the challenge to the imagination transcends the world of model builders by which strategies have been so influenced. It could be concluded that new possibilities for global governance are to be found beyond the strategic incompatibilities in which visions of its future tend to become entangled.

It is metaphors which provide the imagination with "keystones" to balance the tensions between tendencies which, without such integrative elements, would appear incompatible. World governance in this sense is a question of "imagination building" rather than "institution building".

Governance at the highest level should therefore focus attention on the emergence and movement of policy-relevant metaphors -- that are capable of rendering comprehensible the way forward through complex windows of opportunity. The challenge lies in marrying new metaphors to models to ensure the embodiment of new levels of insight in appropriate organizational form.

The more concrete implications for governance are explored elsewhere (see Coherent Policy-making Beyond the Information Barrier, 1999).

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