Weerbarstig veranderen. Paradox van de vrijheid.

Both within and outside organizations, employees and managers, or citizens and politicians ask, and sometimes demand, swift solutions to all kinds of problems. This concerns small and simple problems, but also addresses complex and ambiguous situations, where people are confronted with impediments, even pain. In many cases professionals, such as managers, politicians, and consultants take actions that make life easier. Think of the introduction of ERP systems or the merging of two large companies. This is not always the case, e.g. redesigning work processes and introducing ERP-systems in a heavily politicized organization. Other examples of ambiguous and complex events can be found in many other fields such as social youth care where many organizations try to work together, but where a tragedy occurs more than once each year. Another example is the integration of people from other countries. This is a hard and untamed politicized issue where solutions are hard to find. When I – as a consultant – get involved in such complex and ambiguous situations, I feel a tension between satisfying the principal and many other people involved and trying to convince the people that this situation is not easy or maybe even impossible to solve. On the one hand, I want to avoid the ambiguity, the unpredictability, and the fact that I am dealing with a complex of many things, within which many people interact with each other. It is as if I am looking for something to tame the cognitive and normative unpredictable sides of what is happening. At the same time I want to be as professional as possible and by trusting my knowledge and experience regarding the complex nature of many events, I try to postpone my first response.