On the origins of - and our responses to - terminology

For years I’ve been influenced in my work with/in teams and organizations by US General (retired), Stanley McChrystal, in particular, his book Team of Teams. I’ve adopted the book title as a description of the goal organizational design in this work, referring often to the intention to cultivate teams, and connected teams-of-teams.

Recently, in the midst of the uptick in visible military conflicts that have attended the current US federal administration, it came to me through channels that team members were rejecting the term, for reasons of its military provenance.

Compassionate to the concern, I was nonetheless a little surprised at the response given my sense the term was in fact generic in its origins. A little research suggested otherwise, that - at least in popular discussion - McChrystal and co. had in fact coined it. Still, it seemed to me to be a bit of over-indexing on the part of my teammates, but I didn’t have the language to respond in a thoughtful fashion. So I turned down my use of the term.

Which brings us to today, and my reading of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s book, Outgrowing Modernity, her follow-up to Hospicing Modernity, which had a significant impact on me. Combined with continuing ed course I took, centered around the book’s content, I’ve described it as the most-substantial experience I’ve ever had in learning … or, unlearning, to adopt some of the book’s foundational content and premises.

In the introduction to this follow-up book, the author offers the following invitation:

“Especially if you encounter ideas or words you find disagreeable, observe your resistance and try to trace it back to the underlying desire behind the response.' In recent years, GTDF has often used the acronym VUCA (vola-tility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity because it helps capture the complexity of the challenges we face in our work and because it introduces a level of dissonance. Although VUCA originated in the US military, we use it because it serves as a practical tool to initiate a process with a useful level of precision and friction, not to conform to any ideal of descriptive or conceptual purity. This is not about endorsing or rejecting the term's origins, but about remaining flexible and responsive to the challenges of our time, even when the tools we use come from unexpected places.

[The Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective’s] work is grounded on a meta-critical stance of self-implication and subject-subject relations, which is not about achieving purity-whether ideological, linguistic, or aesthetic. We intentionally move away from the desire for perfection in form or the pursuit of progress as an unquestioned goal. Instead, we focus on engaging with the messy, unpredictable realities we find ourselves in. Our work is grounded in the understanding that complexity resists neatness-and so should the language we use to navigate it.”

In this invitation I found, with gratitude, a partial response to my teammate’s concerns … though a response it’s not yet time to share, not least as those concerns were not expressed directly to me. Instead, I sense I’ll be offering similar invitation’s to Vanessa’s in the future, when I’m the one sharing new-to-my-audience’s ideas, including those worded by the term “team-of-teams.”