Conditions for survival in the manufacturing industry in VUCA era
Satoru Murakami
CEO Goal-System consultants Inc.,
The difference between ambiguity and abstraction, and three realism
Last time, I examined "complexity" and "uncertainty", but this time I would like to sort out "ambiguity", "abstraction" and "three realism" that exist around VUCA. In fact, "ambiguity" and "abstraction" are completely different things.
Ambiguity is a state in which one sentence has two meanings or you do not know what you are saying, but a high degree of abstraction is completely different from "incomprehensible". The degree of abstraction is the degree of "the form in which the word contains many concrete meanings".
For example, mammals mean not only humans but also animals that belong to many specific "mammals" such as goats, cows, sheep, and monkeys. Also, even numbers include all even numbers such as 2, 4, 6, 8, 108, 392, and so on. In other words, if you use abstract expressions correctly, you can express things more "rigorously" than just concrete examples.
No matter how many concrete examples you give, it is not possible to explain the concept itself clearly. On the other hand, abstraction is originally a method for explaining the concept itself, and when trying to express things in an abstract manner, it is easy to use ambiguous words with a wide range of interpretations, which is exactly " It's a wall of ambiguity. The higher the level of abstraction, the higher the degree of freedom of interpretation, which can lead to ambiguous expressions.
Therefore, it is important to think about "abstract" and "concrete" as a set. Whenever you hear an abstract expression, you need to materialize it to a feasible level. And it is "three realism" that supports this view of abstraction and concreteness. The three-actualism is the idea of valuing the three of the site, the actual object, and the reality. Mr. Ohno of Toyota always visits the site, always picks up the actual object, and sees the reality with his own eyes. I teach you to look, check, and think.
This is exactly the basic attitude to eliminate ambiguity. It is natural that people who actually see the site or the actual thing and those who do not see this three-actualism have a completely different perception of reality, but even if they see the actual thing at the site, the perception of "reality" is different. Some people can see the reality properly, while others can see nothing even if their eyes are open.
As I introduced in the section of Dr. Goldratt's dissertation, there is an abstract essence (concept) in reality. This abstracted "concept" is a habit, and even if it is the same concept, it is actually dressed as A, B, or even if it looks the same as A, it is different. Therefore, first of all, it is important not to be obsessed with the reality that is actually visible. Next, it is important to open your eyes and look at the reality, but not to be too particular about the current situation and to think about the essence. Also, in some cases, it may be necessary to process realistically while valuing flexible ideas.
It must be remembered that the meaning of the word "three realism" is to correctly grasp the current situation "dynamically" and to process it realistically according to the changing reality. In that sense, what we must be most careful about is the wall of "Ambiguity". In fact, ambiguity can be reduced by accumulating knowledge and borrowing the experience of others. Therefore, it is necessary to gain knowledge by accumulating a lot of experience and mistakes as quickly and cheaply as possible.
The silver bullet is to use a fast learning cycle to accumulate and narrow down failures, to ask someone you know and to borrow the experience of others.
