WPenner's Blog

I recently read an interesting series of articles by Hal Rondo¹ dealing with the emergence of consciousness from a Jungian psychology perspective. What caught my attention was how closely Hal’s description mirrored a customer experience failure that I endured. In fact, Hal’s model of the emergence of consciousness beautifully describes the genesis of a business innovation. The following describes the process and connects it with business innovation with examples and conjecture from my experience.

The main steps from unconscious to conscious in Hal’s model are:

1. Beginning
2. Differentiation
3. Maintenance of Differentiation
4. Me / Not-Me
5. Symbolism
6. Mind-Body
7. Implements & Impediments

1. Beginning

Hal claims the consciousness’s origin is the dark, primal unity of unconsciousness. He suggests that primal consciousness, the Jungian uroboros, and gnostic pleroma are interchangeable. The Jungian uroboros is the dragon eating its tail and is about integrating opposites like light and dark, good and evil into an undifferentiated mass.

A business before innovation usually has an undifferentiated mass of information (feedback, help requests, usage patterns, etc.). This data is “unconscious”, in the sense that the information may be collected or may flow past unobserved.

In my recent experience, I sent a query about a new feature that was not working properly. The customer service desk receives such an enormous mass of communication it took them 5 hours to respond to my question. Such an information overload allows for no time to examine the incoming data for problems.

2. Differentiation

In the second step, material objects impinge on the unconscious in an instinctual, chaotic jumble without reflection. Consciousness emerges from unconsciousness by abjecting (literally, “away-throw”) so distinctions grow. These fuzzy distinctions are undefinable, more an instinct that “something’s there”, but no one can “put their finger on" what it is yet.

For businesses paying attention and mining their data regularly, this might be the emergence of a new category in their regular reporting. Other businesses rely on employees to notice such differences. Either way, such information is a mere blip, subliminal if noticed at all.

In my recent experience, employees must draw, out of the mass of service requests, the observation that a problem exists that is new. Without the initial spark of, “Hey, something’s going on here,” the process stalls. The customer service desk could not see how my problem differed from others, and the process stopped here.

3. Maintenance of Differentiation

Hal says the maintenance of differentiation is crucial for the conscious to be separate from the unconscious. The recognition of opposites achieves this discrimination.

In innovation, the process moves from merely noticing to holding the problem in mind long enough to recognize how it differs from other problems. This might result from repeated customer inquiries that all reference a particular aspect of the product or services. The time gap between noticing a problem (step two) and realizing that it might be worth addressing (step 3) is frustrating for customers and the business. Usually both want a speedier response.

In my recent case, the service desk failed to notice that my case’s distinctions. So, instead of dealing with the difference, they sent me an FAQ explanation, attempting to guide me through a primary level process, inappropriate to address the problem. Their failure to understand the distinction I was making and speak to it at the sophisticated level I needed drove me to frustration and leaving their platform.

4. Me / Not-Me

Hal’s next point is that the conscious differentiation of objects becomes an opposition of Me to Not-Me. The process of abjection sets the survival of Me at risk from Not-Me, since re-merging of the two appears synonymous with the dissolution of Me.

Initially, denial of the problem is a common response to differentiation. More specifically, blaming the customer is a common response to reported problems (in IT, the phrase is PEBCAK — Problem Exists Between the Chair And Keyboard). Taking the problem into the body of the business can feel like a threat to the survival of the business itself — though it’s rarely phrased in those terms.

In my recent experience, the response demonstrated that the service desk projected the problem onto me, the user, rather than internalizing it as a system problem. Since they did not address the Maintenance of Difference, personal frustration with the company’s failure to respond adequately at this level is just wasted energy.

5. Symbolism

Hal describes the emergence of language from consciousness, allowing for further division and definition between unconscious and conscious.

The unclear, intuitive understanding that there is a problem that emerged in step 2 needs to morph into a description for innovation to move forward. The data-mining algorithms must provide something definitive or the employee must put their understanding of the problem into words. Without symbols with which to think or communicate about the problem, no further progress develops.

In my recent experience, this step corresponds to someone at the service desk saying, “Wait a minute! This highly experienced user is pointing out something novel; he’s not just a crank. Let’s call it Problem X until we come up with a better name.”

6. Mind-Body

Hal then posits that after the invention of language, consciousness makes two further separations: body from the world and mind from the body. These separations allow the mind to start the reflecting procedure, particularly on the body and the world.

I’m going to take a leap here by distinguishing between the sensing unit (the mind) and the rest of the business (the body). I’m open to arguments against such an identification, but the analogy fits my narrative, so humour me a bit.

In the business, there has to be a way for the language in the mind (sensing unit) to make it to the body (the rest of the business). My experience working on a service desk suggests that this gap is a crucial break in business improvement. Service desk employees that feel cut off from the rest of the business feel powerless to effect change and hoard useful information, sometimes maliciously. When the rest of the business loses contact with customers, the lack of information flow causes business stagnation. Advancing the system to the next stage requires a system for capturing and sharing insights throughout the rest of the organization.

In my recent example, the company needs employees to escalate problems or for a regular review of the service call log by other members of the organization. This represents institutional learning. Without such reflection, communication between the mind and body is impossible.

7. Implements & Impediments

Hal claims that the mind’s last step of differentiation is categorizing elements of the world into implements and impediments. Implements comprise any tool or constituent parts of a greater whole. Impediments include any blockage of libido flow or psycho-physical development. At the simplest level, implements are helpful and collected, while impediments are bad and avoided or destroyed. This differentiation marks the beginning of morality.

“Blockage of libido flow” might sound very NSFW, but is crucial for the innovation process. Innovation is a creative process that expands the boundaries of the organization. When Steve Jobs came back to a deeply troubled Apple in 1997, his solution was “We’re going to innovate our way out of this mess” (Japan MacWorld Keynote Address)². Sustainability is a kind of libido flow that results in creative business development, instead of stagnation, decline, and dissolution.

No matter which innovation style the business prefers, identification of impediments is a key starting point. The more thoroughly the exploration of the problem space, the more likely the solution's success. A company can also mis-identify customers as impediments, leading to destructive behaviours — a kind of negative morality. For example, a friend tells the story of a board decision he was privy to that determined it was cheaper to settle lawsuits than improve their product’s flaw.

Innovation is incredibly risky, as most experiments fail. Systems and processes are implements that provide some mitigation of this risk. Implementing a simple system of communicating insight to the rest of the business, for example, increases the likelihood of success. An innovation process for experimenting, getting management support and even ending an experiment is another instrument helping the business reduce creative risk.

In my recent encounter, the company would ideally have a system of mobilizing the product triad (the product manager, design lead and technical lead) to review the identified issue and address the problem. Empowering this team to address client issues would keep the company from driving me away.

Ongoing Product-Market Fit

People and their circumstances are always changing and so moving from the unconscious to conscious occurs continually. In business, market dynamism ensures that customer and competition behaviour changes, requiring an ongoing quest for product-market fit.³ Developing the awareness, processes and tools to make good, even moral innovation decisions sets elite companies apart from those that fail.