p.667 In this paper we show the downsides of the widely preferred 'spectacular' approach to achieving success and argue for greater appreciation of a less conspicuous, and less direct mode of engagement that is more in keeping with a world that is itself ever changing. We call this more nuanced approach 'Strategic Indirection'. We maintain that, contrary to popular belief, sustainable success in any field of endeavour is rarely a consequence of large-scale, attention-grabbing actions. Rather, the true cause of such success is often found elsewhere in the 'waning candlelight' of seemingly inconsequential acts and mundane coping actions.
p.668 Whilst there may indeed be instances in which large-scale, high-profile, planned actions do appear to produce immediate short-term effects, there is also evidence to show that more often than not they eventually fail because of the unintended consequences that ensue from such actions (Scott, 1998: Flyvberg, 1998; Chia and Holt, 2009). One alternative is to look elsewhere for a more 'loosely coupled' (Weick, 1976) causal explanation, whereby, over time, seemingly inconsequential and understated everyday actions, gestures or responses emerge as primary causal agents in their own right. Even more importantly, the notion of passive 'non-action' in the sense of 'allowing things to happen' must be countenanced in an alternative explanatory schema. For too long, such conceptually more difficult notions have been conveniently overlooked and under-appreciated because of the obvious empirical difficulties associated with them. Yet, to attempt to provide a causal explanation of what happens without recognising the role of such nuanced ways of responding would be to do a grave injustice to what actually goes on in the world of practical human affairs. This revised appreciation of the crucial role that such nuanced forms of responses and indeed non-action can play in shaping outcomes, will help reorient and re-educate our attention towards the mundane and the everyday in accounting for success in human endeavours.
p.668-669 we maintain that much is to be gained from appreciating the silent efficacy of indirect, passive and understated ways of responding as opposed to the direct, rational and dramatic forms of action underpinning current theories of management. We argue for a greater appreciation of the way small, seemingly inconspicuous adjustments and self-cultivating refinements, including occasions involving self-restraint in organisational life, actually enables the development of an organisational modus operandi (Bourdieu, 1990) that helps prepare it to capitalise on future possibilities. This more benign and understated form of organisational transformation eschews the dramatic and the spectacular in favour of more oblique and circuitous ways of bringing about desired outcomes. We call this 'anti-heroic' approach 'Strategic Indirection'.
p.670 the overall predisposition of the West has been to eulogise that final arrested moment of triumphal accomplishment (i.e., the final end state or outcome) and to downplay the importance of the messier, often convoluted and intrinsically precarious emergence of human situations, including, in particular, the phenomenon of success. There is a built-in impatience for visible, tangible, short-term results. Success or victory is to be accomplished 'loudly' by directly confronting and overpowering the 'adversary'. Yet such a heroic and spectacular approach in dealing with human affairs brings problems.
p.671 this Western preference for direct, frontal and heroic confrontation is intimately linked to a planned, goal-oriented, and rational-calculative logic of action... Yet this approach carries with it significant downsides. It tends to generate unintended consequences because of the 'imperious immediacy of interest' (Merton, 1936: 901) associated with such an obsessive preoccupation.
p.672 This awareness of the shortcomings of a direct and rational 'head-on' approach in dealing with human affairs is much better understood in the arts and humanities, and in the work of the wise... Keats came to define his notion of 'negative capability' as a rare quality of being content with 'uncertainties, mysteries, doubts' and to resist the irritable tendency to reach 'after fact and reason' (Keats, 1817/2002: 60-61) prematurely... Negative capability is an indirect response in that it is more an ability to resist action than a positive capability of acting; it is a form of Strategic Indirection.
p.673 In The Silent Transformation, Jullien (2011) maintains that our failure to notice the effects of small, cumulative changes over time is due to the grounding of Western thought in Greek philosophies of being, which encourages us to think in terms of determined forms and stable end states and which therefore leads us to neglect the inexorable nature of perpetual change. As a result, 'We no more see the world getting warmer than we see the rivers carve out their beds, glaciers melt or the sea eat into the shore, and yet this is what is constantly happening in front of our eyes' (Jullien, 2011: 11). Commitment to an ontology of being orients our attention towards end states and their immediate, visible causes rather than towards the underlying processes of emergence; being is privileged over becoming. Causality is therefore assigned to the 'heroic' actions of stable, identifiable agents and it is this outlook that motivates the direct interventionist approach to human affairs. Change is construed as epiphenomenal, something that has to be deliberately brought about through agentic action, rather than as something that occurs naturally and inevitably. As a consequence, active intervention is more valued than passively 'letting happen'.
p.673-674 Acknowledging the presence of 'unowned' processes implies acceptance that situations contain their own internal dynamics and that outcomes are more often a result of their ongoing self-reconfiguration, independent of human intentions, than of direct, purposeful interventions. The cause of 'success' is therefore more attributable to the underlying propensity of things (Jullien, 1999) than to heroic actions on the part of identifiable agents. This, therefore, leads to a tempering of the heroism attributable to leaders and to recognition of the fact that efficacy in attaining outcomes may just as well be a result of timely, understated interventions that accord with the underlying momentum of things.
p.674 The idea that change processes cannot be reduced to the actions 'of' things (Rescher, 1996: 27) remains relatively foreign to the world of management academia, where heroic agency is regularly assigned an elevated status in accounting for the successes of corporations. As a consequence, there is inadequate appreciation of how situations can develop their own momentum and interlocking logic and thus take on a life of their own, regardless of human intentions. Jullien (1999: 14) calls this an 'inherent potentiality at work in the configuration'. In this regard, timing and timeliness of intervention, including 'active waiting', 'strategic inaction' and obliquity in the manner of intervening, become critical in increasing the probability of achieving a favourable outcome... it is a heightened sensitivity to such micro-changes often occurring unnoticed and at the periphery of attention that ultimately improves the chances of securing sustainable, longer-term success.
p.676 Sustainable progress, material success and outstanding accomplishments, like deep insights, often come unexpectedly and 'on the rebound' so to speak; apparently aimless and 'purposeless' exploration or action can be surprisingly productive in terms of tangible outcomes.
p.676 echoing Adam Smith's (1759) notion of the 'invisible hand', the Scottish Enlightenment figure Adam Ferguson wrote:
Mankind [...] in striving to remove inconveniences [...] arrive[s] at ends which even their imagination could not anticipate [...] Every step and every movement of the multitude [...] are made with equal blindness to the future, and nations stumble upon establishments,
which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design (Ferguson, 1767/1966: 122, my emphasis)
