‘Our best work happens when we don’t know what we’re doing’. Discuss

French, Robert; Simpson, Peter

Abstract

The article challenges the dominant assumption that the key to working effectively as academics, organizational researchers, consultants, managers or teachers is to know what we are doing. Instead, it proposes that learning comes from working at the edge between knowing and not-knowing. Wilfred Bion’s assumption was that the mind grows through exposure to truth - but it is a ‘truth’ which must continually be discovered in the moment. The authors are less concerned with precise methods, practices or techniques than with the analysis of the disposition or state of mind, which can make it possible to bear the tensions and uncertainties that arise when one leaves behind the security of the known.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 1999
• Deposit Date: Nov 5, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 3, 2016
• Journal: Socio-Analysis
• Print ISSN: 1442-4444
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 216-230
• Keywords: learning, edge, not-knowing, truth-in-the-moment
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1098132
• Publisher URL: http://www.grouprelations.org.au/publications/view.chtml?filename_num=210146
• Contract Date: Apr 3, 2016