Doug Garnett wrote a bog post titled Complexity vs Precise Language in Business (31 March 2025).
« For a word as conceptual as differentiation, as Tyson Yunkaporta observes, the process of precise definition can be a process of death. In such cases, the more narrowly and precisely we define the idea, the less our words represent the idea. »
« It’s not that precise definitions are always wrong. Rather, there are many times they are not productive, necessary, or safe. »
« There are many types of definitions — only some should be precise… So the following offers two types of ideas where one should be precisely defined while precision damages the other.
- Words attempting to capture big concepts or ideas... When we demand precise defining words we do great damage to the ideas. Such is the case with the word “differentiation.” Product difference, after all, is an idea. Demanding precise definition prevents creating products customers find different in meaningful enough ways to create economic value (e.g. profit) for the company.
- Words labeling specific measures. When we are working with specific measures, highly precise definitions are required without question. Thus, someone looking at a report of “conversion rates” must know the exact and specific definitions of the numerator and denominator used to calculate the rate.
Businesses must learn to live with ambiguity around some very important words and demand excellent precision around others. »
« Within complex situations our focus is detecting whole results and the patterns of those whole results — whole results which emerge. We also cannot know what patterns will emerge by studying specific individual behavior of parts — no matter how precisely defined. We know the patterns only through the difficult and indirect challenge of observing what emerges — the difficulty Murray Gell-Mann describes. »
« In my teaching I illustrate the ambiguity of a “whole result” by showing photos of our dog Ellie…. The class is then asked which photo captures Ellie’s “whole” being. None do. In fact, the entire set of photos can only help develop a sense of what she might be, but cannot capture and represent her “whole.” »
« To perceive complex whole results, then, we must allow ambiguity. A term which helps with this ambiguity is Robert Heinlein’s idea of “grok” — as in “do you grok the whole result?” It allows us to talk without precision yet also with great common and shared comprehension. (He introduced the term in 1961’s Stranger in a Strange Land.) »
« Businesses need to develop a sense for when precise definitions are valuable and when more ambiguous definitions are critical. »
« Businesses need to be comfortable with ambiguity as ambiguous definitions are often those which most accurately capture broader patterns — the patterns we must understand to grasp new opportunities. »
« A great deal of business relies on statistics and numeracy. Doing this, though, requires that we work with very specific definitions. [This means] much which matters in doing business cannot be measured or analyzed with statistics because it is, inherently, too ambiguous. »
Articles of Interest 