December 1
In the Land of Opportunity, Achievement and Despair where professional people spend their working days, there is a high, hard ground and a swamp. On the high, hard ground there is firm footing, good light, and useful, effective tools with which to work. Conditions in the swamp are dramatically different: There is no firm place to stand and people feel they are in over their heads; the light is bad – dark, gloomy and uncertain; and the tools that most people bring with them are either inappropriate or obsolete for the work that must be done.
High Ground
On the high ground there is a sense of order and predictability. The rules are mostly explicit and clear, and the roles people play in working on their problems are defined by education, training, and seniority.
Swamp
In the swamp things are in a perpetual mess. As the poet John Keats put it, “There is nothing stable…; uproar’s your only music.” The rules of engagement are murky and shifting, and the sources of legitimacy for the roles that are available are confusing.
High Ground
People who work on the high ground usually work in comfortable settings. They are well educated, well paid, and well respected. Interactions between them tend to be characterized by an atmosphere of civility and mutual respect, at least on the surface. To use T. S. Eliot’s illuminating image, people come and go “talking of Michelangelo.”
Swamp
People in the swamp may be well educated, but they are rarely well paid or well respected. The work is messy, frustrating, and often painful. Civility and respect are liable to be in short supply. People frequently divide into factions and define each other as “”the enemy.” They are constantly preoccupied by such questions as “How are we going to survive?” “How can we get those bastards?” and “When will we get a break?”
High Ground
The people who spend their working lives on the high ground bring specialized and expert knowledge to their work. They are mostly scientists, engineers, technologists, researchers, and skilled and experienced technicians. The work they do is usually theory-based, and often leads to hypotheses about causes and relationships. These hypotheses are then tested by gathering data using quantitative methods, expressed in numbers, and organized into tables and charts. Many of their “recommended solutions” to the problems they struggle with emerge from their efforts as reports, studies or academic papers containing suggestions and recommendations as to what needs to be done.
Swamp
Down in the swamp there are no “experts” who can tell others what to do. Everyone is struggling to figure out what is happening and what should be done. Those who can make the best case – and at times this means those who make the most outlandish promises or who shout the loudest – gain influence, while those who hold back tend to be ignored. Rather than formulating hypotheses to be tested, resulting in the generation of substantive information, swamp people rely upon hunches, intuition, beliefs and faith in order to make their case. When data do appear in the swamp, it is often ignored or distorted.
High Ground
The problems that are addressed on the high ground are problems that can be solved. As Nobel Prize winner P. B. Medawar observes, “Good scientists study the most important problems they think they can solve. It is, after all, their professional business to solve problems, not merely to grapple with them.”
Swamp
Down in the swamp, the people’s business is grappling with problems, not solving them (since that’s often impossible). People working in the swamp do not get to choose which problems they want to work on, but must take on the problems that are assigned or that they encounter on their own.
High Ground
While the “high ground” problems are often new, and sometimes even mysterious, the methods for working on them are generally well known. People know where and how to begin; they are confident that the methods they have been trained to use will yield positive results. When positive results do not appear, they move on to more promising prospects.
Swamp
In the swamp, all problems are new and mysterious. While there are some important principles which can provide guidance (“Don’t look for a solution until you a have a deep understanding of the problem.” “One person alone cannot hope to understand what is really happening.”), what is called for is improvisation, experimentation, and provisional tryouts. “Do something,” said the American artist Jasper Johns, “then do something to that, then something to that, and eventually you’ll have something.”
High Ground
While the people on the high ground are good at writing recommendations and making reports, most never actually attempt to put into practice their own recommendations. They leave this to others.
Swamp
Those who work down in the swamp are responsible for not only deciding what to do, but also for doing it! If anything is to be accomplished, they are the ones who must do it.
High Ground
When the people who work on the high ground experience failure, they are not punished. Failed experiments are seen as necessary steps toward success. When an important problem is “finally solved,” then honor, glory and financial payoffs follow.
Swamp
When it comes to the rewards of working in the swamp, things are grimmer. No rewards are given for failed attempts, and since the problems that people must grapple with never get solved, recognition, honor and glory are rare. As a result, those who expect that “solutions” to fix important problems will emerge from the swamp are perennially disappointed. People who spend their working lives in the swamp must be content with the personal satisfaction of having done Good Work.
Where Shall We Work?
After discussing the different challenges to be found on the high, hard ground and in the swamp in The Reflective Practitioner, Donald A. Schon asks the critical questions: Shall we stay on the high, hard ground where “the problems…however great their technical interest, are often relatively unimportant…to the larger society, while in the swamp are the problems of greatest human concern? Or shall [we] descend to the swamp where [we] can engage the most important and challenging problems?”
His questions cuts to the core: Where will we choose to work, and what kind of problems will we tackle?
Been There, Done That!
Schon’s questions, while important, are rhetorical:
First, because no matter one’s professional or vocational choice, eventually we all find ourselves in one swamp or another. Those who spend most of their working days on “high ground” must eventually leave the lab or the office and go to a meeting where people are engaged in activities of a very different nature: They are talking, and often arguing, about prospects, policies and practices, and they are engaged in the very tough work of making difficult decisions about which directions to take. Because the issues are complicated and because the behaviors of the people discussing the issues are often erratic, emotional, irrational, and self-serving, these meetings are swamp-like. While they may be referencing data and recommendations from “high ground” reports and research studies, the data and recommendations themselves neither make decisions nor resolve problems. In fact, the data and recommendations are often distorted or ignored. Making decisions is the work of human beings, each of whom brings to the table their prejudices, preferences, beliefs, values, and biases.
A second reason Schon’s question is rhetorical – “…shall [we] descend to the swamp where [we] can engage the most important and challenging problems?” – is because we are already there! We regularly “descend” down to one kind of a swamp or another: We struggle with complicated personal decisions and choices; we despair over family relationships that never seem to get solved; we find ourselves in serious conflict with bosses and colleagues at work; we struggle to hold together some of our important relationships; we face issues that are not “Right vs. Wrong,” but “Right vs. Right,” where both sides of an issue have legitimate claims. We are well acquainted with swamps!
From High Ground to Swamp and Back
Situations turn into swamps when we find ourselves confronting important and complicated situations and issues that are rapidly changing; that are confusing and complex; that often consist of a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” dilemma; that involve other people who not only hold strong opinions and preferences that are quite different from our own, but seem unwilling to discuss them, let alone work together to make things better; where many of these people lack the knowledge, experience, or skills that could be helpful; and no matter what we do with these problems, they refuse to get resolved once and for all.
We have all spent time in swamps, and we will find ourselves continuing to muck around in them in the future. Three questions are important: “How can we survive in the swamp?” “How can we make sense of what is happening there?” and “How can we get out?” In the coming weeks I will address each of these questions. Stay tuned!
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