Let’s start our pilgrimage by following one of the most significant signposts of all: the workplace should promote absurdity. Signpost 2 came out of the idea that our capability to be absurd gives us a competitive edge over logic-based algorithms in the future of work. Because of this, absurdity should be nurtured at the places where we work (Signpost 3).

But the long-standing relationship between rationality and the workplace cannot be underestimated, so we must follow this signpost with caution. In spite of my concerns, the calibrations tell a different story. Almost all of our locals wanted to at least head that way, with the majority willing to go there, see righthand chart of Fig. 33.1.

Fig. 33.1
figure 1

Calibration of Signpost 2 – absurdity. Established view (left), Personal view (right)

Full size image

In light of what you now know about these calibrations, the percentages are unnecessary, simply pay attention to the size of the shapes. Any difficulties in distinguishing small differences between them can be taken as a visual representation of the margin of error.

I was surprised by the established view (lefthand chart), in which a larger portion of the calibrations point towards where the signpost is pointing rather than in the opposite direction.

“There is room for absurdity in the workplace”, said Brooke and then went on to explain the variety of rooms in the workplace, such as ‘innovation labs’, and other creative spaces where absurdity could exist. It soon became apparent that the agreement with this signpost had to do with the perceived association of absurdity with creativity. However, Brooke continued:

I don’t see absurdity as a sort of wholesale, you know, a thing that takes over the whole of the workplace. The problem is how you can continue to get the benefit out of that experience when people leave that space.

And that is where that trail ends, and the questions start. Can absurdity be contained behind doors, in a room? And what about other aspects of absurdity beyond that of being a steppingstone to creativity? Claire said:

Absurdity is big and powerful, it has something very pure to it, and maybe it’s not even possible for the workplace to promote absurdity. Maybe we ignore it and don’t make it a destination. Absurdity will find its way. It is rationality which creates absurdity.

“It is rationality which creates absurdity”… mmm, hold that thought.

In his paper The trouble with wilderness [81], William Cronon, Professor of history, geography, and environmental studies, puts forward an interesting idea: wilderness is a product of civilisation. In other words, it was not until we developed civilisation that we positioned nature as wilderness. Cronon then attributes much of our dysfunctional relationship with nature to this idea of wilderness.

In a similar way, our dysfunctional relationship with absurdity might come from conceiving it as a by-product of our rationality. However, our signpost is a bit trickier than the wilderness-civilisation dichotomy because we cannot explore the world of the absurd as easily as getting into a car and heading off to the woods. Or so I thought. Our local Gavin sent me on a path:

Check out carnivals. Carnivals are little moments where people are allowed to be absurd. You know, when in medieval times the king dressed up as a peasant and the peasant dressed up as a king and everyone reverses their roles. But it’s only for a day or so, once a year, that you can upset the balance of everything.

Gavin was talking about the Carnivalesque world [82] as described by Russian linguistic and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin. Gavin continued:

But more than anarchy or a safety valve for releasing societal tensions, the carnival creates the potential for negotiating new relationships.

Before I knew it, I was deep into the carnival trails. A world of absurdity which is not only void of hierarchy and normality, but also one which cannot be contemplated, but lived for as long as the laws of “the reverse side of the world” are in effect [83].

I then realised that I had seen a similar type of absurdity in some workplaces before, but not within the walls of colourful rooms with funky chairs and lots of sticky notes on the walls. It was at the end of the work week when hierarchies are temporarily flattened during Friday’s afterwork drinks, not by employees putting on masks as in carnivals, but by removing them and mingling as people.

The trails of the wilderness and carnivals revealed the richness of absurdity which sits behind Signpost 2 as well as the one which creates new meaning and purpose in Signpost 13, and also Signpost 14 (seeing normality through absurdity can show the absurd as normal); and 15 (normality can be the offspring of the unchallenged).

In this type of absurdity, we have no choice but to see the world differently, albeit temporarily. And while exploring these trails, I came across a study [84] that singles out a type of environment which “activates a different mindset” and makes us “seek novelty and unconventional routes.” This wonderful environment is a disorderly environment.

According to the study, disorderly environments can help people to “break away from tradition, order and convention” and so the researchers advise against what they called minimalist design trends and desk sharing because these can reduce the opportunities to make a mess.

I wondered if the explorations of the absurd in architectural movements like postmodernism (see BEST stores designed by SITE in the US during the 70s [85]), or even deconstructivism could produce the same results as a messy desk or room can. I couldn’t find evidence of that. But according to Gavin these types of designs are only expressions of absurdity; and in the end, the few buildings that are actually built, still function as a big box.

Then came my chat with Miles. With the assertiveness of those who drew a line on my map to Sydney, he said: “check out James March and The Technology of Foolishness. March was an absolute genius!”

With that title and such recommendation how could I not? March’s Technology of Foolishness (ToF) [86] is a fascinating essay which speculates on ways in which we can escape the fettering logic of our reason. One of these ways is play, which March defines as the “deliberate, temporary relaxation of rules in order to explore the possibilities of alternative rules.”

March was not only a genius, but brave too. He dared to make a case for taboo concepts like coercion and hypocrisy in organisations and society. In the case of hypocrisy, March interprets it as the inconsistency between expressed values and behaviour and thus “a bad man with good intentions may be a man experimenting with the possibility of becoming good.” I now think about an organisation which fails to live up to their values as one experimenting with the possibility of becoming better.

March even found a way in which we can act within the system of reason and still do things that are foolish. It’s incredibly simple and you can try it: forget things. In ToF, memory is an enemy.

March published his ToF in the early 70s and I couldn’t wait to find out what type of innovations or organisations it has prompted since. I couldn’t believe my luck when I came across a paper entitled: Whatever happened to “The Technology of Foolishness?” [87], but I was quickly disappointed. I learnt that while the ToF has been much praised, it has not been much used; and when it has, it has been mostly in a superficial and ritualistic manner with some of March’s key ideas sugar-coated. To be fair, the ToF is far from being plug-and-play and as much as it is thought provoking, it gives no advice on how it can be installed in organisations.

Continuing down this trail we eventually bump into Richard Farson’s Management of the Absurd [88]. Farson is quick to differentiate absurdity from stupidity (a synonym of foolishness), but rather than trying to pick a fight with March’s ideas, I think it’s Farson’s way to make peace with our dysfunctional relationship with absurdity as a consequence of rationality. Farson’s focus is on paradoxes, yet another layer of absurdity. One example is “the better things are, the worse they feel” which has striking similarities with our own Signpost 4 about adversities.

Continuing further down this trail, we see a growing interest in the role of paradoxes in management. In the book fittingly titled Paradox Management [89], we learn about the close relationship between how organisations respond to paradoxes and the value they create: better management of paradoxes, better organisations. Yet again, this type of absurdity seems different. It is more prevalent, persistent, and unavoidable than that of the altered world which we can only venture temporarily.

If from where we are now, we were to take out a pair of binoculars and point them backwards, we would see the trails of absurdism. There, life is absurd, not in itself, but in our absurd attempts to find meaning in it. But we won’t go that far back. However, those up for a hike might want to check out Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus [90].

Here we take a left turn and venture into the last trail on this signpost: Dadaism – an art movement which rejected logic and reason in favour of irrationality and nonsense. An example is Kurt Schwitters’ Environments in Constant Flow [91], in which a column of debris would appear one day, and a grotto would appear on the next. This is as close as Dadaism got to architecture, but there is no Dadaist architecture as such, how can one build upon absurdity?

Instead, try this little exercise: cut words out of a newspaper (or any other text), put them in a hat and shake it, then take the words out one by one and write them down in the order in which they came out.

Voila! You are “a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar” [92] said Tristan Tzara, who came up with this method to create Dadaist poems.

It’s such a simple and elegant way of creating new meaning through absurdity that I tried quite tenaciously to use it as a means of infusing absurdity into this book. But I couldn’t.

Except for the rare occasion in which the words come out in the same order as the original text, its output is beyond the understanding of anyone, vulgar or not. Giving up on my writing style was easier than facing the possibility that Signpost 2, the landmark of my pilgrimage, took us nowhere. Then came this from the same local who introduced me to The Technology of Foolishness, Miles said:

Innovation is an important purpose of an organisation, but I would not promote absurdity in 90% of the jobs that they perform.

I immediately recognised the brevity and temporary disruption of the world. Miles continued:

Organisations need absence of absurdity to deliver what they do, to complete the tasks. There’s no space for absurdity when we’re talking about coordination.

Voila!

Tzara didn’t care about coordination, the subjectivity of artistic outputs rarely do, but an organisation where no one understands each other would not go very far. The temporary exploration of the absurd needs to be followed by a much longer effort of rational coordination, free of nonsense.

I wondered, if I were an organisation, what percentage of time had I spent exploring the absurd? The result: 7% (42 days) of absurdity walking to Sydney and 93% trying to coordinate such absurdity as clearly as possible by reading, talking to others, and writing this book.

FormalPara In Between 7% and 93%: A Lost Language

In Madness and Civilisation [93] the French philosopher Michel Foucault reflects on the changing nature of what insanity is and the different ways in which civilisation has dealt with it through time.

In the Renaissance, insane people were part of society and there was a place for them to interact intellectually with reasonable people because they possessed “knowledge of the limits of the world.” That would all change in what Foucault refers to as the Modern Era (eighteenth century) when “Modern man no longer communicates with the madman … There is no common language, or rather, it no longer exists.”

I wonder if The Technology of Foolishness, The Management of the absurd, and Paradox management, aim to reinstate that lost common language which sits in between the seven percent of the time exploring the limits of the world and the 93% of the time to get there.

However, percentages do not imply importance. And so, be it through Friday night drinks, forgetting things, or good old messiness, the workplace should allow for opportunities to briefly venture into a different way of seeing the world. There lies the opportunity to go from logic-based innovations which lead to doing the same things we currently do cheaper and faster, to innovations that deliver unimaginable futures.

Once seen, the environment should promote the coordination of the absurd and make the most of the unavoidable paradoxes to arrive at such futures.