I’m starting to read management techniques that claim we need to start embracing paradoxes, and start listing outright contradictions.
A paradox is something that seems a contradiction at first, but turns out to be coherent in a not so obvious way. A paradox isn’t a contradiction, and if you can’t correct the contradiction is a logical basis, then you do not have a paradox you have a contradiction, which is a fallacy.
I can’t tell if these people are outright charlatan word smiths, or are actually that stupid.
The idea is not seemingly new in management, it’s been appearing in books like The Empty Raincoat for years, but these previous attempts worked to link the seeming contradiction with something coherent. An example of this is Edward Luttwak, was he states that strategy is performing paradoxical activities. For example: The shortage route between two points is a straight line, but in strategy you don’t want to do this and create a diversion in order to surprise the enemy. Luttwak here creates a LOGICAL reason as doing something that at first seems illogical. This is NOT something todays “paradox” advocates are doing, and thus are not pushing paradox, but a logical fallacy justifying their own incoherence.