Ambiguity Is a Powerful Strategy for Social Innovators

(Illustration by iStock/Just_Super)

As Heather McLeod and Leslie Crutchfield observed in describing the difficulty of creating high-impact nonprofits, social innovators often face obstacles that have nothing to do with their own internal operations. Bold ideas, a strong team, hard work, and clear metrics will get you far—to which we could add community involvement, new technologies, partnerships, and agility—but, often, the biggest obstacle that organizations face is, simply, an inability to overcome power structures that are deeply invested in keeping things the way they are.

What do you do in environments where generating new ideas, working incredibly hard, and surrounding ourselves with great people isn’t enough?

Our prevailing strategies and narratives of success will often fail us if they reflect the thinking and practices of those with power. After all, approaches that are useful when you hold power are almost never useful when you don’t. As a result, rigid and overly managerial approaches restrict our movements. We do ourselves and future generations a disservice when we uphold the kinds of faulty narratives that prevent more of us from succeeding in the face of opposition and obstacles.

I’ve been searching for new answers. Who won when they shouldn’t have? How have people succeeded when the odds were against them? What’s consistent across a wide range of environments? What makes all the difference?

Ambiguity is my answer. Across fields and throughout history, it is the production and embodiment of ambiguity that gives people an upper hand when it looks like they have none, whether in social movements, politics, art, business, or a host of other areas. We don’t typically view ambiguity as an asset; it’s more often seen as the variable that interrupts our plans, a factor we’re forced to deal with as a result of our complex and ever-changing world. Even the embrace of ambiguity that exists in new endeavors often comes with the recognition that, sooner or later, it’s to be eliminated. But innovation can be born out of ambiguity, as Nobuyoshi Ohmuro pointed out: One must be willing to adopt approaches that go beyond privileging rationalization and categorization, to include an awareness of, and appreciation for aspects that are not readily understood in those terms.

The prevailing perspective on ambiguity—among those who work to bring about social change—is the idea that it’s something we respond to. And a large and useful body of psychological research demonstrates just how poorly we do at it: When faced with ambiguity, our instinct is to turn nuances into binaries, rush into decisions to avoid uncomfortable feelings, and refuse to change our minds. And yet we aren’t the only ones responding to it. The difficulty we have should remind us of how much
power there is in creating and embodying ambiguity. Especially in environments where the odds are stacked against us, ambiguity represents a powerful strategic option for social innovators (however counterintuitive it may seem to say so).

Be Multiple!

In the social sector context, ambiguity represents a willingness to adopt or produce characteristics that are open to multiple interpretations, so that different audiences “read” different meanings into your actions. This may seem, intuitively, like a bad thing. Yet conveying multiple messages simultaneously can allow you to move through a difficult environment unimpeded. Rather than seeing ambiguity as a flaw to be forced away, those who embrace ambiguity celebrate its potential for creating openings that more obvious and one-dimensional approaches would never reveal.

For instance, an organization trying to create the conditions necessary for a big change might use ambiguity in their communications to signal certain messages to their supporters without tipping their hand to, or drawing the ire of, those who could resist the change. Activist groups will intentionally generate ambiguity by moving quickly during direct actions, in order to confuse their opponents and increase the likelihood their actions are successful. Picture a flight attendants union developing an ambiguous style of striking to make it impossible for airlines to know whether particular workers will go on strike or not: Rather than moving en masse, the union strikes a small number of flights unpredictably, minimizing the impact on members and passengers while maximizing disruption to the airlines.

The freedom to be dynamic sits at the heart of ambiguity’s power. And I have seen in recent years a deep yearning among social sector leaders for exactly this type of openness. For many people, it feels like the strategic options available are narrowing at the same time they need more. Ambiguity holds the potential to put this freedom back into our lives, transforming how we view our environments and approach our work.

Hold Multiple Readings of Your Situation

Social sector leaders are often pressured to present the complex issues they tackle as far simpler and more predictable than they are in reality. These digestible narratives can be helpful for introducing people to causes but their false certainty can also produce a form of ignorance that prevents us from seeing latent possibilities for change in apparently settled circumstances. To avoid this, and to navigate conflicting perceptions successfully, social sector leaders need to learn to hold multiple readings of a situation simultaneously in order to transform any moment into more than what it looks like initially.

This is not a skill that comes easily to many people! But as Darren Isom, Cora Daniels, and Britt Savage note in “What Everyone Can Learn from Leaders of Color,” “many successful leaders of color can call on a deep understanding of how to navigate existing systems while also imagining something completely different from a status quo that has never worked for them.” This ability to hold multiple readings of a moment—to simultaneously see both what is and also what could be—is at the root of ambiguity’s strategic power. Rather than accepting the status quo as a rigid conception, we need to juxtapose it with more radical and imaginative possibilities, to see them as related, overlapping, and intermingled, metabolizing moments into what we need them to be.

Adopt an Ambiguous Form

In their recent piece on “Why Organizers Need Mobilizers and Mobilizers Need Organizers,” Amanda Tattersall and Nina Hall lay out the practical need for movements to adopt a range of strategies, working in tandem, in order to achieve meaningful change. No single strategy works every time or in isolation; instead of being boxed in by one single approach, we need to allow ourselves to adopt more ambiguous forms in order to access a fuller range of strategic options.

The fluid structure of the HIV/AIDS movement in the first decade of the virus offers a useful illustration. Because the situation was unprecedented, the movement’s combination of strategies had to be as well: Rather than replicating one movement’s model, the HIV/AIDS movement adopted pieces from many different places. There were underground health networks informed by pre-Roe abortion clinics, as well as antiracist organizing, palliative care, policy changes, DIY media, new drug trials, and experimental art. This simultaneity of action, as Sarah Schulman calls it in Let the Record Show, allowed the movement to move into many spaces at once and accomplish all that the moment asked of it. We need to allow our own work to find the forms, as ambiguous as they may be, that allow us to move beyond rigid conceptions of ourselves and bring about all that the moment asks of us today.

Introduce New Variables That Change the Dynamic

When social innovators face a board stacked against them, we too often engage in futile battles and pat ourselves on the back for trying. Instead, we should be finding ways to change the dynamics we find ourselves in. One of the best ways to change a dynamic is by introducing new variables: Rather than playing out a losing battle, you reframe the conflict into a wider set of domains, where you might possess unique advantages.

For instance, during the Delano Grape Strike of the 1960s, Filipino and Mexican farm workers faced a political board weighted heavily against a narrowly economic set of demands, and so they introduced new variables to shift the balance of power. When a judge made it illegal for striking workers to say huelga/welga, the Spanish and Tagalog words for strike, a group of women supporters intentionally got arrested for chanting the term publicly in order to transform the labor battle into a fight over free speech as well. The women’s courage was also turned into a fundraising opportunity the very same night.

Over time, a straightforward battle over wages became an ambiguous affair spanning everything from spirituality and free speech to presidential elections and antiracist solidarity. The new variables turned the growers’ local strengths into national weaknesses and eventually created the conditions necessary for the farm workers to win higher wages. In our own work, we will be presented with moments where the board is undoubtedly weighted against us. Rather than launching into losing battles, we’ll have to find and introduce variables capable of shifting the dynamic and creating the openings we need to make the impact we desire.

Determining When to Use Ambiguity

As Rebecca Subar demonstrates in When to Talk and When to Fight, navigating difficult environments is always a matter of strategic choices, and in toggling between options effectively as circumstances change.

In order to assist social innovators in determining whether ambiguity may be beneficial at a particular moment, I’d like to share a set of questions I encourage folks to ask as they assess their strategic environments:

1. Are we making a particular move because it feels good or because we believe it is the best strategic option?
2. Is our urge to be perceived a certain way causing us to take better options off the table?
3. How ready are certain stakeholders for an honest conversation about this situation?
4. Do we have enough power right now to be fully open?
5. Would being more ambiguous help us learn new information?
6. Are there parts of ourselves we could play up to help us?
7. Are there narratives being created that need to be addressed directly by us?
8. Do we need to clarify the situation now or do we trust it to come to light over time?
9. Is now a time for predictable or unpredictable moves?
10. Will our next move be more impactful if we make it quickly or patiently?

Honestly assessing your situation through these questions can, over time, help develop your organization’s comfort with adopting different approaches for different circumstances. Today’s situation might call for a more ambiguous approach, but tomorrow might require us to be more bold and outspoken. Keeping all options on the table helps ensure our best chance of success.

Social change work is highly improbable work. The odds really are stacked against so much of what we’re trying to bring about coming to fruition. But the beacons of ambiguity I studied share two fundamental characteristics familiar to social sector leaders: a faith in the worthwhile nature of their work and a resistance
to adopting popular yet unproductive approaches. So, at its core, ambiguity is meant to serve as an overdue antidote to the restrictive expectations placed on us and our work. It is okay to not do what is expected and to pursue new strategies. With no shortage of issues to be overcome today, understanding and tapping back into the strategic power of ambiguity might be just what we need to make more of our work successful.

Read more stories by Kyle Crawford.