When I was a kid, I tended to view the world in stark black-or-white terms. Things were either amazing or terrible. People were brilliant or bozos. My dad would caution me: right answers often land closer to the middle of a spectrum than its extremes.
Later in life, I read an essay called Axis Thinking, which organized these ideas into a coherent framework. Written by the musician, producer, and systems polymath Brian Eno, it appeared in his book A Year with Swollen Appendices.
Axis Thinking has influenced how I consult. I wanted to hear Harry’s take, so I brought it as the focused reading on episode 35 of Traction Heroes. How has it changed my work, specifically? Eno put it well:
Axial thinking doesn’t deny that it could be this or that, but suggests that it’s more likely to be somewhere between the two. As soon as that suggestion is in the air, it triggers an imaginative process, an attempt to locate and conceptualize the newly acknowledged greyscale positions.
I am interested in these transitions — these moments when a stable duality dissolves into a proliferating and unstable sea of hybrids. What happens at such times is that all sorts of things become possible: there is a tremendous energy release, a great burst of experimentation. Not only do the emerging possible positions on this new-born axis have to be discover ed and experienced and articulated; they have to be placed in context with other existing axes to see what new resonances appear.
That is, it’s not enough to look for solutions in the middle points of a spectrum. Sometimes, what’s called for is questioning the spectrum altogether. One or both poles might not go far enough — or go too far. And exploring completely different axes might prove fruitful.
Axial thinking is highly relevant today. See, for example, the barren discussions that frame AI as either all good or all bad. Most realistic scenarios fall somewhere in the middle — but opening an altogether different axis (e.g., replacement ↔ augmentation) can spur more generative discussions.
Gaining traction sometimes calls for dissolving stable dualities “into a proliferating and unstable sea of hybrids.” Nuance and imagination are more important than ever. This conversation offers pointers on how to move past entrenched polarities.