The Path of Paradox

Steven Unwin,
C. Eng, BSc. (Hons). MCQI, MIET, MRAeS.
Access to Excellence Co Ltd, United Kingdom
steve@accesstoexcellence.co.uk
www.accesstoexcellence.co.uk
www.photonbooks.com

1. Abstract

We live in a rapidly changing world yet our approach to change seems strangely static. We seek certainty
and answers and appear to deny the uncertainty which must accompany change. At the heart of our
approaches to change is the plodding mechanical application of tools based on PDCA which, far from
creating future opportunities, are used to extract best practice from past performance. This is despite the
fact that inevitably this best practice was achieved in worlds that no longer exist.
Rather than a static view of the characteristics of good performance, we need to recognise that change not
only redefines what is good but also rewrites the rules by which we identify what is good.
In this paper I hope to illuminate some areas in which new thinking may help energise current quality and
improvement approaches.
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
J.K. Galbraith

2. Keywords

Paradox, Paradigm, Thinking, Challenge, Change

3. Background

We live in an interconnected and fast changing world where what brought success yesterday may no
longer be valid today. It would seem that our approaches to quality and improvement must be equally fast
changing, yet the reality appears quite different. The development of quality and improvement ideas
appears painfully slow with real thinking on the subject a rarity. The success of quality improvement tools
is inevitably at best patchy and the principles at the heart of quality thinking appear characterised by long
standing beliefs.
These beliefs for example tell us
• . This ignores the fact that inevitably this success must have
been achieved in a world that no longer exists.
• although as Henry Ford said

• Mistakes are bad we owe the existence of the human race to a process
of making mistakes.
 The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this basic attribute, we
would all still be anaerobic bacter
Lewis Thomas
• istake This ignores the reality that in a fast changing world this is
impossible.

Heraclitus
These and many other beliefs hold truth, but at the same time hold fallacy. For a fast moving world what
we need is an agile thinking approach which can think in the moment, not the plodding application of past
thinking.

4. Introduction

The above quotation is taken from the introduction an English collection

of some of the works of the great Persian poets.
These words feel an appropriate way to begin as they hint at the challenge faced by anyone attempting to
share ideas through the use of words.
This is a challenge that was beautifully described by the English writer Virginia Woolf in Thought and
Thinking when she said;
ying,
even to someone opposite, what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom
is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking
and returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with a wandering

Given the subject of this paper, we might consider that our first paradox is that when
communicating effectively, sometimes more is less and less is more. When we write,
what we communicate is not simply contained in the words, but more importantly in
the spaces between them, the spaces the words invite us to explore.

no better than many pianists, but the pauses between the

notes - ah
These thoughts are paradoxical. The music is the notes, and the book is the words, but
at the same time the book is not the words, but what the words achieve and the music
is not the notes, but the emotions they stir.
As a consequence, the author of the book is not the only writer, and the creator of the music not the only
composer. The reader and listener also play their part in creating the work. Thus although th
name appears on the front cover, knowing who really wrote the book becomes a little more challenging.
When we choose to think this way, wherever we look we can see paradox.
4.1 Connections

you have an
person who had the idea. But an idea is no more than the collection of thoughts, the piecing together of
information gained from connections with other people and their connections with others. Thus we might
, but actually belongs to everyone.
The world is thus a far more connected place than we might care to recognise. This may appear to make
things rather complex, and perhaps for this reason we are trained by experience and expediency to be
blind to connections and the paradox they create and blind to the cost we pay for this simplification.
As a consequence, when involved in quality and improvement, we live our lives in a world we see as
black and white, a world where right and wrong, good and bad can be identified, labelled, described and
packaged, typically as case studies and best practice.
This appears expedient and is sometimes claimed to deliver improvement, however our world is not
simply black or white. Nor is our world simply black and white. It is black whilst being white and in the
same moment every colour in between.
We crave the simplicity of a dualistic world and avoid the complexity of reality, but in doing so we deny
the real world.
I hope you will see that paradoxically this complexity we seek to avoid is actually the essence of life, for
it is in this rainbow of colour that opportunity resides.
Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.
Winston Churchill
The introduction to The Hand of Poetry continues with the story of how wisdom was once collected in one
place, like a huge pool of Mercury, then shattered into tiny bits widely dispersed over the planet. But
every so often some fragments roll together, not to reform the pool, but as clusters to remind us of what
the wholeness once was.
I believe we each have these tiny fragments within us waiting to be rolled together. As I begin this paper
therefore my contribution is to offer a few words and to invite you to explore the spaces between them.

5. Paradoxical World

Peer into the night sky and you will see hundreds of stars. Away from the lights of a city you can see
thousands more and know that these represent the countless billions of stars that make up the universe.
Wherever we look we appear to see stars, yet the darkness of the night sky reveals the true scarcity of
stars. Though our eyes are draw towards the pinpoints of light, Space is appropriately named. It is
comprised almost entirely of nothing.
Space is so empty that if we were mosque or
cathedral, it would be more densely packed with sand, than space is packed with matter.
Indeed the whole 11 billion year history of the universe could be described as the history of nothing.
Since the Big Bang (a moment when the entire universe was contained in an incredibly small, incredibly
hot, incredibly dense point) the universe has grown, not by creating matter but by creating space between
matter, a process that continues today.
It may appear that the stars exist to illuminate the space, but it is only the existence of space that enables
the stars to exist.
5.1 Fractals

Even where matter appears to exist within the universe, the story is the same. Peering into an atom is very
much like peering into space. Only one million billionth of the volume of an atom could be described as
solid matter. In a universe that is almost entirely nothing, even the
objects, the stars, the Earth and you and I are themselves almost entirely
nothing.
We see that our world is a place of substance and at the same time a place
of nothingness.
In seeing the same patterns at the atomic scale as we see at the
astronomical scale, we can glimpse the fractal nature of the universe, a
feature that it seems we may have understood for thousands of years and
which is reflected in early Celtic art and of course is well demonstrated in
Persian art and design.

5.2 Connections

Viewing the night sky we can also sense the immense distances that separate us from our neighbours and
the isolation of this tiny blue planet. The distances are indeed vast, yet we are of course intimately
connected to the Moon and the Sun and in turn to the Orion Arm of our galaxy, the Milky Way and to the
rest of the universe.
At the atomic level these gravitational connections are mirrored by electromagnetic forces which tie the
widely dispersed parts of an atom together in an equivalent way.
We can see that at the scale of the universe and the scale of the atom we are isolated and remote whilst
being tightly connected.

5.3 Interconnections

The fractal nature of our world means we can see these same patterns being repeated. If we alter the scale
a little we see our lives lived amidst immense networks of connections. As individuals we may feel remote
and isolated from the rest of the world, but we are also intimately connected in time and space in ways that
mean a change anywhere will impact on us, and changes we make will be felt everywhere.
The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who
knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.
Frederick Buechner
A decision taken in Tokyo changes the fortunes of people in Scandinavia. A discovery in India opens or
closes factories in South America. A banking problem in the US means people lose their jobs and homes
across Europe.
Of course we have always been connected, but in the past these connections may have taken generations
to be felt, and their effects diffused by the passage of time. The advance of technology means that now
these connections may act in a matter of days, hours or even moments.
The Global Credit Crunch and Global Warming are but two of the more readily visible examples of the
countless connections that are continuously flashing to and fro across the world, shaping and reshaping all
of our lives.
This interconnectedness and the challenge it presents was wonderfully described by Joseph Addison when
he said.
There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every
man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The
transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which
our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future
period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.
Joseph Addison

5.4 Change creates change

These and millions of other influences create the pressures for change and cause us to plan our response.
Yet even the creation of our plans to manage the effects of change, themselves send out ripples of change
that dart and flow and return to us to be felt as new pressures for change.
So we see that even the action of planning to deal with change sets in motion a chain of events that lead to
new change which may undo the plans we set in place. In a world of such incessant change we may call
into question the very act of planning. What role can plans play when immersed in such a sea of change?

5.5 Answers and Questions

In our dualistic world of right and wrong, our focus is on finding the right answers.
When our plans search for answers we seek to bring stability to change, we seek to resolve problems and
find solutions. But as we have seen, that act of forming an answer, itself creates the very change it sought
to address. Our search thus becomes unending. Each answer, even if considered successful, sows the seeds
of its own destruction. We become immersed in an endless round of initiatives, each promising to deliver
the solution, yet each inevitably destined to fall short.
Our search is for the ultimate solution, though we know it can not exist. Our paradox is that we seek to
manage change, but require the absence of change if we are to succeed. Our case studies describe a world
that can no longer exist the moment we change something.
In this sea of change we need a shift in thinking and must question not simply the quality of our answers,
but the value of answers themselves.

5.6 Avoiding Answers

Avoiding answers is not easy. Answers appear to be the bedrock on which progress is made. Our world of
right and wrong seeks to filter the correct from the incorrect, the successful from the failed. This is the
basis on which progress is made, or so it seems.
But in fast changing times perhaps we need a new way of seeing and a new way of thinking.
Just as the stars can only exist because of space, what is right can only exist because of what is wrong, so
in our dualistic world what is right creates what is wrong.
We might think of this world thus being polarised with a scale of degrees of right and wrong, as below.
In this polar world we see progress as movement along this scale.
Positive progress is measured in movement towards what is thought correct and negative progress as
movement in the opposite direction. In this world right and wrong are opposites and we might imagine
that a great distance has to be travelled to move from one to the other.
Of course your view of right may not be mine and we may each invest great energy in arguing our
position. Careers and even lives may depend on maintaining a particular view and we may be very
reluctant to move.
In any event, we have a polarized view, and change is seen as progress along this scale.
But this world denies the reality of dramatic and incessant change. In such a world, what worked
yesterday may not work today. What was correct an hour ago, may no longer be correct now. What
created a success a moment ago, may not create success now.

poles, but even these are not fixed, and periodically what was the north becomes the south and vice versa.
In such a world, what was right may now be wrong, only to be right again at some point in the future.
Progress once thought positive may now be seen as negative. What was once wildly successful may now
be viewed with scorn. What once was a hopeless failure, may be for the moment a burning success.
We need an alternative way of seeing.

5.7 A World of Questions

Our glimpse into the night sky revealed the brightness of the stars and the blackness of space in their
absence. If we choose to see it this way then there could hardly be a greater contrast than between the fiery
brightness of a star, and the dark nothingness of space. Each would sit at the opposites of our polar binary
world of right and wrong.

Rather than opposites, we might choose to see them as

manifestations of the same single magic of existence. Rather than spread apart, they form a pair, an
inseparable pair, contrasting in every way, yet linked by a staggering degree of sameness.
If we bend our polar world and allow this sameness to place the star and space alongside each other we
create a new way of seeing, and perhaps an alternate way of thinking.
Now we see that difference, instead of being widely separated, sit side by side. Instead of arguing that one
is right and the other wrong we allow ourselves to
the question into an answer; instead we live with the question.
W resolve either that the stars create space or that
space creates the stars, instead we allow ourselves to live with the
question.
We thus begin to think of questions differently. They cease to be
the route to an answer, and become valued for themselves, the
means to illuminate options.
In our new picture we might imagine standing with our feet
straddling what were previously two extremes, the two contrasting
answers.
Of course the attraction of the answers is
strong. They meet at the crest of a
steeply pointed ridge. One foot sits at
the top of a steep valley that leads down into one answer and one set of beliefs.
The other foot sits on the other side of the ridge at the top of a contrasting
valley which leads down into a contrasting answer and set of beliefs.
In each valley there is the comfort of everyone
believing the same things, and each valley is shielded from the other by the
steep ridge.
Each can live their lives for the main part in quiet isolation seldom having
to worry about those who live beyond the ridge.
Only those who walk the ridge can see the whole picture the alternatives
and options. Only from this vantage point can the world be truly glimpsed.
Of course there is no real ridge. It can exist only in our minds. We can choose our answers and live quietly
in the valley they lead to, but to live on the ridge we must constantly ask questions and be constantly on
our guard against the apparent comfort of allowing ourselves to live our lives in the valley.
So our new way of seeing things is to avoid being drawn into the valley of answers despite the great
temptation to do so. There is a powerful comfort in following answers, a comfort that paradoxically is
often not dispelled even when we know the answers to be incorrect. As the cartoon character Pogo said;
for those happy to live in the valley,

But what does this shift in thinking mean in a practical sense. What does it mean to shift from answers to
questions?

6. The Reality of Questioning.

To explore a little further, let us zoom in a little to take a look at the atomic structure of change. When we
do so we find at its core the Deming Cycle of Plan, Do, Check, Act or (PDCA). There are variations in the
naming, but all change has this basic pattern.
The paradox at the heart of change is that PDCA is of course all about Plan, Do, Check, Act and at the
same time is nothing to do with Plan or Do or Check or Act.
When we see PDCA we see the four steps, but what we fail to see is the space between these steps. Our
focus is on the stars and we fail to see the space between them.
What we see are the frozen frames of a movie film.
However much we examine them, take measurements, collect
data, review and compare them, we fail to see the movie.

without them, yet the movie does not exist there.

The movie exists in between the individual frames where there
appears to be nothing.
It is in this empty space between the frames that the magic of the
movie comes to life. It is here that the emotion is communicated and the
connection made between the film maker and the viewer.
When we look at Plan, Do, Check or Act, no amount of analysis, no concentration
of thought and no application of effort can succeed.
PDCA exists in Plan, Do, Check and Act, and yet not does not exist there.
PDCA exists between these steps, in the blur of transition between them in the
space where there appears to be nothing.
It lives not in the meticulously applied
certainty of the steps, but in the dangerous
uncertainty of leaping between the steps. It is here in the empty
space that the magic of change comes to life.
Here the emotion, the passion and the magic of change can be
found. It is here that the emotion is communicated and the
connection made.
The paradox of change is that it is everything to do with PDCA and
yet nothing to do with it.
Paradoxical though this seems, it is simply the transition from the static world to the dynamic world of

of exploration.
Thus change has
• nothing to do with what you do, but everything to do with who you are being.
• nothing to do with plans, but everything to do with planning
• nothing to do with checking, but everything to do with being aware.
• nothing to do with acting on the past, but everything to do with acting in the present.
Change is not an activity, but an ability. Change is about who you are not what you do.. Get who you are
correct, and what you do with flow from it as a side effect.
6.1 Dynamic

The shift is from the static to the dynamic, yet this shift is one that we almost always fail to make.
The sharp edge of the tools of change is all too often blunted by static thinking that transforms them from
tools with which to explore and create the future, into tools which replicate the past.
Consider for a moment the Excellence Model. A model built on the principles of questioning, but almost
universally applied to generate answers.
Its application in the assessment of organisations is invariably used to identify those that are performing
the best. It is used to focus on the frames of the film, to compare them and identify best practice. Its
magical power to explore the world that exists between the frames is so little understood that its magic has
tragically been all but lost. As such the model has been reduced to little more than a guideline on how to
compare performance and its ability to create the future has been totally lost.

7. The Path of Paradox

Of course as writer and reader we face a problem in creating this paper. If you take anything that I have
said to be true, as an answer, then you meet with the paradox of this paper. What I suggest is that the very
nature of having an answer is what we should dispel.
The path of paradox is not the replacement of one answer with another, because it seems more relevant or
appropriate, but the replacement of the attachment to answers with questioning.
In a fast changing world, answers begin to decay from the moment they are
created. It is the question that created the answer that should be treasured.
With this question an answer can be re-created and recreated again and
again.
For example, i dream of preserving the
answer to return to each time we want to know the time. Yet much of our
approach to improvement does just this, returning to answers that reflect
worlds that have long ceased to exist.
The comfort of answers is that they require little thought, and our apparent
progress can be measured by the steps we take. At each intersection on our
journey we can record the choice made and chart our progress.
Our progress is clear and visible, but what may be less visible are the
countless opportunities that we have not taken, and those that were no longer
visible to us as we marched forward deeper into the valley of our choice.
A we progress, each answer defines and constrains the next question we ask.
The choices we make define our progress towards our chosen goal.
But in the absence of progress through answers we need a way of steering our course.
How can we know that we are travelling the high ground of the ridge when there is no
clear road and no clear trail of junctions with which to
measure our progress?
The answer is that our path will be marked by paradox.
Much like the path through the mountains is marked by
poles which when the road is hidden beneath feet of snow,
poke through the snow and mark the position of the road below.
For us the poles each mark the position of a paradox. If we travel far without encountering paradox, then
we can be sure that we have begun to slide into the comfortable valley below.

8. Life

Life on the ridge can be difficult and uncomfortable, and there is undoubted comfort to be found amongst
the herds in the valleys well away from the ridge, so why would we want to leave the valley?
Perhaps this is the paradox of life and I offer three quotations to prompt your thoughts.
"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life.
But there was always some obstacle in the way,
something to be got through first,
some unfinished business,
time still to be served, a debt to be paid.
Then life would begin.
At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."
Alfred D`Souza

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how,
you begin to die a little."
Martin Luther King, Jr

To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.
Jack Kornfield

9. Summary

In a rapidly changing world we must not only rapidly change our response to circumstances, but rapidly
change our understanding of what it is to respond to change.

"Advances are made by answering questions. Discoveries are made by questioning answers."
In this paper I have offered some words and some space in which to explore the difference between the
pursuit of answers and the pursuit of questions as a way of creating an approach to change that will itself
change.
an may fulfil the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and

Oliver Wendel Holmes