In praise of ambiguity

I still remember the accident that marred my first job. I had been supporting senior engineers for months when I got upgraded from errand boy to project supervisor. I was going to oversee the construction of a packing line, an experience that presented contrasts. The operators were playful and diligent, but we felt the pressure of a tight schedule, and the setting was rough. The work days were filled with relentless noise and vibration, soaked in a mist of industrial perfume. The ubiquitous signs of "danger," "caution," and "forbidden" felt unwelcoming but turned out foretelling.

Yet, I was glad about the project's progress as we had started the testing phase unusually on time. During one of those tests, however, things bittered. An operator bypassed one machine's safeguards to unstuck a plastic film, accidentally activating the sealing mechanism. A bloody mess followed as the sharp pincers caught his hand. We nervously took our colleague to the onsite doctor, who diagnosed the cut as a superficial scratch. We went home relieved that afternoon. But not for long. Early the next day, the safety staff launched an investigation to determine responsibilities and lessons—in that order. I worried about how punitive that process would be. When people started speculating about separations, I longed for the errand boy times.

As the investigators gathered team statements, I witnessed technical specialists morphing into lawyers. They scrutinized every sentence in the procedures while subtly advancing self-exculpatory versions. During that week, I also read and re-read those documents to soothe my anxiety; I felt absolved in one sentence; in another, I was doomed. Eventually, the investigation concluded that the cause of the accident was unclear testing protocols; the text left room for interpretation and was ambiguous. They settled my responsibility with a report filed in my records—an ugly scar for a newcomer.

For years after the event, I introduced paranoid checks in my work and sometimes lost my temper chasing ambiguity. Yet, that drive faded as I gained experience and realized that no amount of chasing would dissipate ambiguity completely. I also started noticing admired leaders allowing ambiguity to run free or deliberately introducing it in some situations. With remorse, I caught myself toying with it as I became more politically savvy. I started wondering if I didn't get the ambiguity story right.

More recently, I concluded I didn't because I neglected context and asked myself the wrong question. The question shouldn't have been whether ambiguity was good or bad, but in what situations it could be helpful or damaging.

Spanish football national team 2010: ambiguity as a buffer for conflict

Spain won the 2010 football World Cup for the first time, including seven Catalan players out of twenty-three in the squad: Xavi Hernandez, Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets, Joan Capdevila, Cesc Fabregas, and Victor Valdes. The Catalan share was thicker when considering the starting line-ups.

Catalonia and Spain have a turbulent history, and things were heated again during the World Cup. One day before the final match in Johannesburg, one million people protested for more autonomy in Barcelona. A BBC article from those days portrayed the city as the "bipolar Barcelona," frantic with opposing street demonstrations. Where the Catalan players stood on that matter was a mystery. While most people didn't bother, some loud voices resented that they didn't take a public stand, disapproving of their ambiguity.

Hypothetically, if the coach had forced a public stand, he could have separated "the chaff from the wheat," but at what cost? The team would be in a predicament. Depending on the Catalan players' positions, would their teammates support or alienate them? Should they leave the group to remain consistent? Importantly, would they anger their "constituencies" back home? Maybe embracing ambiguity was the best move. I suspect the Spanish coach at the time, Vicente del Bosque, understood how to use ambiguity to defuse conflict.

Admittedly, embracing ambiguity could feel like an omission to lead. An accusation Vicente del Bosque had heard before due to his apparent aloofness. Yet, I believe that feeling is a reflex response conditioned by our upbringing. We inflate expectations of leaders and trivialize social complexity, assuming we are dealing with a horse when it is a zebra, and zebras can't be tamed. To be sure, the wisdom of letting things flow does not exempt leaders from grappling with issues. Paraphrasing Scott Fitzgerald, a sign of first-rate intelligence is holding two opposed ideas in mind while retaining the ability to function.

Functioning within social complexity requires recognizing rising "messes" and artfully patching them, soothing egos when emotions burst, and redirecting attention when arguments hit stalemates. We should abandon hope for definitive fixes because they are impossible and not even desirable. Karl Weick, professor emeritus of Michigan University on Social Psychology, stated: "Specifically, I would suggest that the effective organization is garrulous, clumsy, superstitious, hypocritical, monstrous, octopoid, wandering, and grouchy." Hence, the real omission to lead isn't embracing ambiguity but inattention and indifference.

During the world cup celebrations in Madrid, Xavi Hernandez, a fine player with alleged independentists leanings, had his turn to address the crowd. He applied formulas about teamwork and finished saying, "venga, que viva Espa?a!"—something like "come on, long live Spain!"—sparkling his teammates' laughter and the crowd's roar. Everybody understood that it was a special moment of togetherness. Later, when asked about that episode, Xavi said he had had some beers and fell back to the solace of ambiguity. Still, he said it.

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster:?ambiguity as a source of organizational resilience

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated when reentering the Earth, killing the seven astronauts on board. Hot atmospheric gases passed through a breach in the left wing structure, which collapsed the aircraft. The commission assembled to investigate the accident emphasized the harmful role of NASA's metrics-rules-based organizational culture. A culture that nudged shuttle managers to overlook ambiguity.

Two weeks before the accident, during take-off, a chunk of insulation foam from the main fuel tank hit the shuttle's left wing. Similar events had occurred before without threatening the crew's lives or the mission's completion; however, some engineers suspected this time was different based on the blurry take-off pictures. They requested better images from military satellites, but shuttle mission managers denied it. Why would they deny a reasonable request? No further investigation was needed because they had labeled the event "in-family"—a previously experienced, analyzed, and understood problem. They had decided to sweep ambiguity under the rug.

In the hours following the take-off, the initial image analysis showed damage in the wing's thermal protection system; however, it wasn't clear which subsystem was affected: the tiles or the reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) cover. An issue with the tiles would be manageable after landing—"in family"—whereas an RCC cover problem would trigger an emergency because a safe return wouldn't be possible. If NASA had declared an emergency on day two of the event, they could have prepared the Space Shuttle Atlantis for a rescue mission, likely the boldest ever.

Unfortunately, a rescue mission didn't happen because managers mislabeled the problem. They decided the issue was "in family" based on two inputs: the opinion of a vocal tile expert who didn't know about RCC cover and a favorable report from a damage simulation software—Crater—designed to analyze hits from projectiles 640 times smaller than this case. Managers ignored the flaws in both inputs because they agreed with their hopes to continue. They were on a schedule and had targets to hit. Crucially, the "in-family" labeling inverted the regular burden of proof of space flight: that it was safe to fly. From that moment, the skeptical engineers had to prove flying was unsafe without—denied— better images. The disaster was in motion.

The magnitude of consequences should determine the treatment of ambiguity. We should overweigh dissent, weak signals, and divergence when stakes are high. It is not about analysis paralysis but scanning for existing skeptical voices and integrating them. In the book analyzing the Columbia disaster, Organization at the Limit, the authors list questions that could have opened other possibilities:: "What would have to happen for this to be out-of-family?", "What else might this be?", "What 'family' do you have in mind when you think of this as 'in' family, and where have you seen this before?". It is humbling to realize that those questions might have triggered radically different decisions.

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In summary, if we write an operational procedure for a precise, repetitive, and bounded process, we could crush ambiguity with all we have. If ambiguity makes people confused, stuck, and frustrated, we should reduce it to tolerable levels that allow action. However, If we are dealing with conflict or facing high-stakes situations, we must treat it respectfully; ambiguity may be the last defense standing between us and disaster.