# The Cause of Known Incoherence By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2022-12-06 And there I sat with my work peers, all wondering what just happened. Where had the sudden change of mind come from? Was anyone going to point out the contradiction? Upon further investigation, nobody was going to say anything. There must be some reason why management changed their mind, but it aligned with the group's original recommendation. Therefore, it was best to stay quiet and accept it. There is no learning. There is no progress. There is only a waste of time and further uncertainty. Keep your head down and do not question the leader. Anybody spending a few years working in an organization has experienced something like the narrative above. Sometimes it works out in your favor, but most of the time the leader and management get what they want regardless of coherence. There are so many complex dynamics happening in these situations that one could spend their entire career unpacking them. But, I'd like to point to one key moment. The point when the group saw the contradiction but decided to do nothing. What advantage is there to let it pass? Perhaps it does nothing to call out the leader's mistake. If the leader is retaliatory, this is especially the case - but only if the leader possesses absolute power over the group. These kinds of power asymmetries exist all over the place in modern organizations. No matter what anybody tells you, there is no democracy and worker empowerment. As a result, the organization is definitively worse off. Time and resources are wasted on obvious mistakes, but power asymmetries prevent them from coming to the surface. Leaders and management reading this may say, "But surely this doesn't happen in my organization as my door is always open, and I'm not retaliatory." This is a delusion driven by the very organizational hierarchy that positions you on top. Worst yet, these hierarchies are necessary and naturally occurring. You cannot wish them away. But you can create structures that create space for opposition and critique. You can embrace the role of analytics as something more than crunching your numbers. It can be a group that thinks deeply and broadly on all issues and, if your ego doesn't get in the way, call you on your shit as the loyal opposition. No one else is systematically positioned to do so within your organization. #### Related Items [[Power Asymmetry]] [[Power]] [[An Organizational Critic]] [[Analytics]] [[Asymmetry]] [[Management]] [[Leadership]] [[Critique]]