The Upside of Contradictions

By Tom Bowes

originally published January 2009

I have been tuned in to contradictions recently. They seem to be everywhere.    For example, I saw an ad on a bulletin board announcing a gardening workshop on planting wildflowers. Er, how are they wild if we are planting them? I saw a bumper sticker today on the back of a Chrysler that said “Lose somebody’s job, Buy Foreign Cars”. It was parked outside a Wal-Mart store where I am pretty sure a good percentage of stuff is made elsewhere. Good chance the gas in the car was foreign too. A few summers ago, my daughter Alannah and I traveled through British Columbia. One of our stops was the small, incredibly idyllic village of Tofino. We returned home to discover Tofino had run out of water! Startling for any community but more so considering Tofino is in the middle of the rainforest! Running out of water in the rainforest is a disturbing contradiction.  

After some honest deliberation, I realized I have plenty of contradictions myself. We drive a Hybrid Toyota Prius. I am thinking of putting a bumper sticker on it that says “My other car is an SUV” because, well, it is. We just built an uber energy efficient and environmentally-friendly straw-bale home. In the back yard you will find our new electricity gulping hot-tub. Luckily, our new neighbours in Eden Mills, a small village that is aiming to be the first carbon-neutral community in North America are forgiving. They welcome us with wine, and bring along their bathing suit. We have a share in a bio-dynamic farm which provides not just organic food, but local food. It tastes especially good with a bold Malbec from Argentina. I eat good food because my health is an important value of mine. So is bliss. Like, when I down a cold beer, after a good run. Like, after a long day canoeing when I am on a rock warmed by the late day sun beside a calm lake, smoking a cigar. Like, when I finish a tub of Coffee Haagen Daz before you can say “oh, did you want some?”   Even my values contradict themselves! Health and Bliss debate daily. If there is something consistent with me, it is the fact I can contradict myself at any moment, like I just did in one sentence. I defer to Walt Whitman who once said:   Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.  

Corporations and lobby groups can be masters of spin and contradiction too. Clean Coal? I don’t think so. “Our people are our biggest asset” -- that is, until we discard them like used Kleenex when we catch a fiscal cold.  The same pattern of laying off people and cutting “discretionary” spending (like training and development) is the first thing to happen, as it was in the last recession…and the one before that. I take little comfort with history repeating itself.    In the good times, we will defend the virtues of capitalism and the survival of the fittest. It seems though when the economic waves get too choppy we are quick to plead for new credit to the government. You know, that institution that is there to impose regulations.  Free market capitalism has now become a contradiction.

I run a company. I could use a bail-out just about now. Unlike the car companies, our customers are actually delighted with our work. Alas, many of them have now suspended using our services because their customers have stopped buying their products or services. And so on. And even if they are recession proof, their budgets are slashed until some collective sanity returns. I get it. I could be bitter and shake my fist at the world, or I can be comfortable with the contradiction of corporations NOT investing in their people or having facilitated dialogue to meet the challenges of the day – at the time they need us most. Here’s the rub, just because I know life is complicated and contradictions exist, does not mean I have to take comfort in them. 

Fully acknowledging the complexities and vagaries of daily life, I know part of my work is to face them and work out that tension to overcome quandaries.  It is the process that leads to innovation.  Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management writes in his book The Opposable Mind, "We were born with an opposable mind we can use to hold two confilicting ideas in constructive tension.  We can use that tension to think our way through to a new and superior idea". What I am really advocating is for all of us to keep aware of what is happening, not turning away from the destructive patterns that we can avoid, drawing upon our courage to innovate or at least attempt alternative measures that bring more honour to our “most important assets” and our environment. 

While bail-outs may pacify us in the short-term, innovation is the balm for the long-term. I am not suggesting this is easy (that would be contradiction!) as our challenges are big and will be more profound as the days pass. All the more reason to seriously examine alternative ways to make our way through them - in courage.