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Dec 09, 2019 2020-04-08 7:40Robust Theme
Productive Tension: What Happens When Smart People Talk and I Listen
By: Kumar Dattatreyan
I've spent the past month cornering smart people and making them talk to me about disruption and change. After five fascinating conversations that left my brain pleasantly sore, I've noticed something: the people who really know what they're talking about don't give you neat, tidy answers. They give you tensions, paradoxes, and the occasional wisdom bomb that makes you really think and reflect.
The Dance Between Systems and Chaos
Marwane El Kharbili — a systems thinker who speaks more languages than I have matching socks — dropped this mind-bender on me: the most innovative organizations are simultaneously the most structured AND the most chaotic.
It's like Disney. Behind all that magic and those suspiciously cheerful employees is a meticulously documented system for EVERYTHING — right down to how cast members wipe their feet before entering a guest's hotel room. This isn't soul-crushing micromanagement; it's what enables their creativity to flourish.
As Marwane put it, using his Taekwondo background as a lens: "Looking at first principles in a system is perhaps the most efficient way of trying to understand and approach that system." Which is a way of saying "figure out the fundamental rules before you try to break them creatively."
He also shared this Moroccan proverb that's been living rent-free in my head: "When you don't know where you're going anymore, sit down and touch the ground." That's not just good life advice; it's basically the executive summary for how organizations should approach disruption.
When Your Culture and Your Marketing Are Dating Different People
Culture branding expert Nader Safinya didn't pull any punches: "Companies are lying to the market. What their message is saying to the market is inaccurately portraying how they behave internally."
Ouch. But he's right. How many times have you seen a company's Instagram feed that's all "We're one big happy family!" while their Glassdoor reviews read like Stephen King wrote them?
Nader's approach is refreshingly simple: make sure your internal culture is truthfully reflected in your external branding. A culture brand isn't about having the coolest office furniture or the most Instagrammable coffee station; it's about creating an environment where people thrive, then telling the world about it — in that order.
The most powerful exercise Nader recommended? Look yourself in the mirror and ask, "Would YOU want to work for me?" Try it. It's uncomfortable but also revealing.
"We Don't Manage Products—We Do Projects. We're IT."
That quote comes from Roman Pichler's conversation with a big insurance company introducing product roles, and it perfectly captures why so many organizations struggle with innovation. They're still thinking in terms of one-off projects rather than ongoing products that create value.
Roman emphasized that digital product strategies should be flexible and adaptable and that product managers should regularly spend time looking at the big picture — monitoring trends, analyzing performance, and watching competitors.
He also spoke about creating environments for experimentation, like the "five percent rule" where teams dedicate time for exploration. Google Chrome and Gmail emerged from this approach, which makes me wonder what people at my client organizations could create if they weren't in meetings 95% of the time discussing why we're having so many meetings.
And despite all the AI hype, Roman reminded us that "I wouldn't trust AI to truly understand human needs and create meaningful solutions. That requires human touch." Sounds like something an AI would say to throw us off the scent, but I'm inclined to agree.
Why Your AI Project Will Probably Fail (Spoiler: It's Your Data)
Scott Ambler, co-creator of Disciplined Agile and generally terrifying smart person, didn't sugarcoat it: "Recent surveys on AI adoption show that data quality is consistently the number one or two challenge organizations face."
Scott's most uncomfortable truth? "We never clean up the mess. There's always funding to do something new, to bang out some new thing quickly, and we talk about going back and cleaning up 'one day' - but one day never arrives."
We're swimming in what Scott calls "technical debt sewage" — which is both a vivid metaphor and something I never want to visualize again!
The organizations that thrive amid technological disruption, according to Scott, build addressing technical debt into their culture. They actually allow development teams to fix things as they go (radical concept, I know) and recognize when a major cleanup effort needs dedicated funding.
Also, apparently the "on time, on budget" mantra that project managers love to chant is actually "a killer from a quality point of view." Teams under pressure to meet arbitrary deadlines cut quality corners, which adds to technical debt, which slows them down even more. It's like trying to save time on your morning commute by never changing your car's oil.
When Traditional Approaches to Emotional Healing Get Disrupted
Stacey Nye took our conversation in a fascinating direction with her work on the Fix Code technique for emotional healing, alongside implementing circular economy solutions for compostable diapers in Samoa. Talk about range.
The Fix Code bypasses traditional approaches to emotional healing by focusing on feelings rather than the stories we tell about them: "The problem is how you feel about whatever you're thinking about."
Stacey noted the most surprising outcome has been "the lives that have been saved" — people who didn't take their lives because they found emotional freedom through the technique. Heavy stuff, but worth noting.
Her compostable diaper work in Samoa shows how one innovation can address multiple issues simultaneously: environmental sustainability, women's economic empowerment, and babies with happier bottoms (turns out plastic diapers + equatorial heat = recipe for rash).
When I asked about the key to successful innovation, Stacey didn't hesitate: "Do it anyways. No matter how crazy it sounds, no matter how many people tell you you can't - do it anyways." Advice that applies whether you're disrupting emotional healing techniques or the diaper industry.
The Connective Tissue between these fascinatingly different conversations
What connects these diverse perspectives is that successful individuals and organizations in 2025 operate in the productive tension between opposing forces:
- Between rigid systems and creative chaos
- Between internal culture and external brand
- Between technological efficiency and human understanding
- Between data quality and innovation speed
- Between emotional resistance and transformative growth
This isn't about finding a perfect middle ground—it's about harnessing the energy created when these forces interact. Think of it like cooking with both sweet and spicy ingredients: individually they're fine, together they're amazing.
So What? (The "Now Do Something With This Information" Section)
Here's what I'm taking away from these conversations:
- Build systems that create freedom: Document your repeatable processes so your team can focus their creativity where it matters most. Boring documentation = exciting innovation.
- Question your alignment: Would you want to work for you? If you winced reading that, there's work to be done.
- Practice continuous strategizing: Set aside time weekly to look at the big picture. No, scrolling LinkedIn doesn't count.
- Create space for experimentation: Implement the "five percent rule" where team members can explore new ideas. Just be prepared for something amazing.
- Balance technology and humanity: Use AI for efficiency, but remember it's still just a very sophisticated pattern-matching tool. Learn how to harness the power of AI to augment your intelligence and experience.
- Prioritize data quality: Your AI is only as good as your data. Garbage in, hallucinated nonsense out.
- Clean up technical debt: Build addressing technical debt into your culture, or you'll have to deal with your growing collection of digital hairballs.
- Remove emotional barriers: Consider how unaddressed emotional patterns might be limiting your innovation potential. Turns out feelings matter, even at work.
- "Do it anyways": When you believe in something, persist despite obstacles and skepticism from others. The naysayers will eventually pretend they supported you all along.
As Nader put it: "We spend most of our time in the workplace, and that's why I believe the workplace is a catalyst for change." By embracing these tensions rather than trying to eliminate them, we create organizations and individuals capable of meaningful innovation in an increasingly complex world. Or at the very least, we make work suck less.
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What productive tensions do you see in your organization? Drop a comment below and tell me how you're navigating them.