Originally posted on LinkedIn on 1 August 2023
Lauren James’s ‘Missing Hat-Trick’ v The Complex Social Reality
One of the highlights of England’s win over China, in today’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, was the performance of Lauren James. As well as her three ‘assists’, she put the ball in the net three times. Unfortunately, her second ‘goal’ was ruled out by VAR, due to what was adjudged to be an infringement by one of her teammates.
After James’s third effort had found the net, the commentator expressed regret that, despite the quality of her play, she had been denied a hat-trick by VAR. After the match, and echoing this sentiment, former England player, Jill Scott, said, “If only that goal had been allowed, it would have been a perfect hat-trick”. No doubt our newspapers will be full of similar comments tomorrow.
Other than acknowledging the quality of James’s contribution, though, why am I mentioning this?
The reason is that these post-event commentaries expose the flaws in what I call “Big Dot Thinking”, which provides superficially rational explanations of what has happened (by ‘joining the big dots’), rather than recognizing the complex social reality of people’s actual lived experience. In the context of organization — and life ‘in the round’ — this same line of thinking creates the illusion that management, government and the like can similarly be reduced to a series of linear, ‘if you do this, you’ll get that’ prescriptions. And so the fantasy continues.
Returning to today’s WWC match, there is only one thing that we can say with certainty about James’s ‘missing hat-trick’. That is, that if her second ‘strike’ had not been ruled out by VAR, the second goal that she actually scored would not have occurred at all. In fact, every kick from that point on would have been different. Nothing that actually happened would have taken place. And we have no idea what would have emerged overall.
And so it is with organization and life more generally. Everything that happens is an emergent outcome of the widespread interplay of people’s in-the-moment interactions. As the interactions change, so does everything that emerges from them.
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