Exploring Tensions with Dialectics
The team knew that continuous integration and continuous delivery would allow them to increase the quality of their product by testing that the code builds, passes tests and works when deployed to a near-production environments. They’d just finished a deployment to production which had taken six months, and had seemingly gone wrong at every step, so they were determined not to have the same experience again.
The problem was, as a team, they were almost defined by their irregular delivery and the struggles it represented. This change required them to start learning technologies and ideas completely new to them. It just wasn’t how they’d been trained to work: the theory was nice, but they were comfortable with what they knew, however painful. And customers were demanding new features, but helping them understand the new approach would be difficult. How could the team resolve these tensions?
When there are tensions like this, there are two or more positions which each have (literal or metaphorical) voices, arguing for each different option. As in the example above, there is no right or wrong answer: the poles are all making valid points. The choice about what one should or should not do in a particular situation depends on the context in the moment, and the history which has brought you to this point. In philosophy, this tension between two or more positions is known as a dialectic.
Four common forms dialectic are the dialectic of identity, of socialisation, of ways of knowing, and of intent, and they can useful when considering being reflexive and examining the underlying issues in a context. This isn’t a definitive list of these types of tension, but they’re at the core of many types of experience.
It is only by hearing the two voices and their arguments in your context and with your history that you can make the choice appropriate for you. The ideal outcome, it is suggested, is combining of positions to create something new. However, it is often more the case one position wins, or a balance is struck between them which may change in the future as the context changes.
Four Common Dialectic Tensions
Dialectic of Identity: Tension between of Sameness and Difference
Sometimes the tension is between what used to be and what needs to be. For example, a company known for its in-person customer service struggles with a shift to digital services. Or perhaps a past design technical or decision conflicts with a future need. Often, the existing position is a factor in people’s identity (“we’ve always done it this way”) and challenging identity can be difficult for people.
Identity is also affected by the route taken to get to the here and now which has given rise to the tension. Colleagues who have been successful because of a particular way of working are unlikely to want to change to something unproven. Teams who have struggled to achieve something — anything! — will take past victories as templates for the future. So it’s also important to consider how the here and now arose, and to consider how that shapes the tensions.
Think about what aspect of identity is in question. Listen to what the voices are saying about what it means to them, and the journeys they’ve been on. Consider how changing the way the issue is being spoken about can reduce the threat to their sense of identity and ease the move to change. For example, “a past design decision didn’t anticipate a particular change, so we should consider how this should be resolved in future efforts.”
Dialectic of Socialisation: Tension between I-ness and We’s
As we go through life, we become socialised into different tribes, first our family, then school, our ethnic and national culture, our professional and social groups at university and work, our local neighbourhoods… As we do, we internalise the voices of those groups (the We’s) which moderate our behaviours and choices, sometimes called “the internalised other”. Sometimes those We’s conflict with our core concept of self, our I-ness. This can sometimes look like tensions between corporate control and processes, and the need for individual agency and independence. It can also present as tensions between tribal factions, harking back to humanities’ earliest social structures.
Think about the origins of the voices in this situation: where does the need for a particular form of control come from? Can it be met in ways which allow for individual difference? How can both be accommodated and adjusted? Are there unheard voices which, if listened to, might better mediate the tension? How can we better enable the authenticity of I in this situation?
Dialectic of Ways of Knowing: Tension between Experiences and Theory
It is generally easier for humans to go with what we learn through direct experience than to use abstract models, because it is easier to trust empirical information from our senses than invisible, untouchable ideas. An example of this is choosing between how we measure organisational improvement: should we use easy-to-measure metrics like productivity and profit, or should we consider qualities like culture and the ability to innovate which are less easily assessed? Should we prioritise delivering new features or securing existing functionality?
Both are valid, but neither offer the benefits that the other brings. Resolving this — usually imperfectly — typically incorporates both the empirical, measurable aspects, and considering the abstract, immeasurable aspects. What can be measured? What can’t be measured? Can you use an imperfect measurement (for example, a usability metric) in to help incorporate the qualitative aspects into a pragmatic solution, even if you need to improve or change it later?
Dialectic of Intent: Tension between Ends vs Means
Understanding purpose is important to knowing what decisions to make, but this can conflict with the processes and tools that are available, and the context in which they exist. For example, an organisation might set a strategy with clear objectives, but teams are unable to achieve them because of constraints beyond their control, such as lack of time, conflicting priorities, contradictory feedback loops, or organisational structures. Other examples include a particular technology stopping a team being able to achieve a particular delivery goal, or a drive for faster delivery cycles conflicts with the consumer’s need for stability.
In such cases, there often needs to be alignment of the ends and means, but sometimes it can require replacing either the intention or the approach being taken. Consider if the goal be looked at in a different way, for example, instead of every team releasing as fast as possible, can team cadences need to adapt to customer’s needs? The intent might need be re-examined to consider if it is still viable given new information. Can the means be changed to accommodate the goal, say by introducing something to the system (whether that’s a person or a tool or something else) that makes a particular objective possible? Does the implementation need to be completely reworked to enable a changing context?
In the team above, we see that these dialectics don’t just appear on their own, but they can build on, or sit next to, each other. What appears to be a dialectic of intentionality where a team’s goals and methods don’t align can underpinned by a different tension. For example, a tension of identity, where a team feels threatened because they are unfamiliar with a new technology which requires them to change the way they think about their jobs, or on a tension created by the way they were socialised to be software engineers. And what about the dialectic of the ways of knowing: at least the team knows they can successfully deliver software using the current method, even if it’s painful.
Exploring these relationships between expressed and underlying tensions can be helpful for you as a reflexive practitioner, and it can be a useful technique for helping a team understand why they’re stuck. As you learn to recognise these patterns yourself, it can also help to explore a particular pattern as it emerges with a team and enable their own reflexivity.
Did you recognise any of these common tensions? Are there other patterns of tension you can think of? Add your thoughts and experiences in a comment.
