The fourth and perhaps most important responsibility of a geek leader is to manage ambiguity. In this most subtle of the responsibilities, a geek leader manages ambiguity at three levels simultaneously, juggling issues of structure, environment, and task.
Geek leaders themselves need a high tolerance for ambiguity and an ability to be productive in the absence of clarity. They need to maintain composure and help others to do so in situations clouded by confusion. The ability to help an entire group make sense of its environment and activities lies at the very core of a leader's role.
Ambiguity is the opposite of clarity. To think about something with complete clarity, you need to have a total command of all the facts about it and also understand the meanings of all the facts. Something is ambiguous if you are unaware of it altogether, have incomplete information about it, or don't understand its implications or meanings.
When you think about the state of your knowledge about the world—its past and future, nature and the works of humanity—you can evaluate it all on a simple two-dimensional scale (see Figure 9.1), with clarity on one end and ambiguity at the other end. Things about which you feel that you have absolute knowledge—certainty about not only the facts but their meanings—you place on the clarity end of the scale (point D). Things about which you have limited knowledge of either facts or their meanings might fall somewhere in the middle (point C). Things that you know exist but are uncertain of the facts or their meanings might fall toward the ambiguity side (point B). And things about which you may be totally ignorant of the facts or their meanings appear at the ambiguous end of the scale (point A).
In general, most things fall somewhere in between the poles. You neither have all the facts and meanings, nor do you completely lack knowledge about them. Most things you know about are at least a bit ambiguous.
Geekwork, by its nature, falls toward the ambiguous side of this scale. Geekwork is largely about the creation and application of technical ideas, identifying and solving new problems or solving old problems in new and creative ways. What could be more ambiguous than creativity? You start out without even knowing what problem you're working on, and when you do finally discover what the problem is, then you have to figure out how to solve it. The entire process is designed to find and resolve ambiguity. So ambiguity is also an integral part of the problem-solution mind-set.
The problem-solution thinking pattern so common in geeks reminds us that geekwork is all about ambiguity. Problems are mysteries that we do not yet know a solution to. Even discovering the right problems to address is a mystery. Usually, we think of functional specialties as being based on knowledge and expertise, that is, on what we do know. Ironically, the geekwork form of knowledge work is organized by what we don't know.
The structures of projects and departments are designed to channel the discovery of questions and their solutions through the application of specialized knowledge. When a project starts, the team members don't really know what they are going to do. They don't even completely understand what questions they are going to be expected to answer, what experiments they are going to have to do. If they are lucky, they do know from what perspective they are expected to approach the discovery and resolution of questions. That's all.
If you fail to understand the fundamental effects of ambiguity on geekwork, you will have a very hard time organizing work productively.
To manage ambiguity, you have to understand that ambiguity itself has a structure. It may seem strange at first to think that what you don't know has an inherent structure, but I have developed a model, the Hierarchy of Ambiguity, that represents a categorization of the types of issues and questions that naturally arise related to geekwork. There are three fundamental categories of ambiguity to manage to create an environment in which geeks can be productive: task, structural, and environmental. The purpose of using these categories is to help you make more sense of the chaos that is geekwork and help you identify issues that you are not yet grappling with but should be (see Figure 2 in Part Two introduction, page 101).
Environmental ambiguity. Environmental ambiguity encompasses the lofty questions about how things fit together—about how the world, marketplace, organization, customers, geeks, and geek-work all relate to one another. It thus deals with issues of meaning, purpose, and identity.
Geek leaders are central players in an organization's attempts to make sense of its environment and to establish a coherent identity. Managing environmental ambiguity has a direct effect on an organization's motivation level, strategic direction, values, and culture.
Structural ambiguity. Structural ambiguity encompasses a range of questions about a smaller scope of issues related to the local organization only. These are pragmatic but important questions about what work will be done and how geeks will be organized to do that work. These questions revolve around issues related to projects and processes.
Geek leaders establish order and structure to ensure that geek-work being done is organized to meet the goals and commitments of the group. Structure ensures that efforts are channeled into productive work, and processes are designed to ensure that work is completed and coordinated.
Task ambiguity. Task ambiguity encompasses questions about how individuals and small groups carry out their specific tasks. These are the day-to-day questions about roles, assignments, and judgments.
Geek leaders manage task ambiguity to help individuals be productive and help them understand their roles in project work. Geek leaders also help set standards for performance and behavior with the judgments that they offer.
The remainder of this chapter focuses on the first and most abstract level of ambiguity that geek leaders manage, environmental ambiguity (see Figure 9.2). Of the three levels of ambiguity, this one may seem the most unfamiliar and vague, but don't dismiss its importance in delivering geekwork. It encompasses issues related to the big picture, to interpreting the entire organization and its surroundings. In many types of work, it may not be essential for leaders and employees to develop a common view of the world in order to be productive, but this is not the case in most technical environments. A common understanding of issues related to environmental ambiguity provides a critical foundation for geekwork.
Issues related to environmental ambiguity are big, broad questions that tie together the world at the highest level that an organization attempts to interpret and deal with a broad array of global concerns—for example:
Who are we?
Why are we here?
How do we fit into and relate to the outside world?
What is the significance of our work?
What are the ethical standards to which we should be held?
Answering these questions helps geeks understand the both the environment and the purpose of an organization, an essential foundation for their work. This information helps guide the technical and managerial decisions that they must make every day as part of designing, developing, deploying, and supporting technology.
Resolving environmental ambiguity also provides more than just background information. Geeks need this information for more than just satisfying curiosity and guiding decisions. It is also essential for meeting their emotional and psychological needs. The worldview developed serves as a foundation for establishing identity and imbuing work with meaning.
In traditional work environments, managers often assume that workers need to understand only their task in order to be productive. Too much information, they think, may be confusing or distracting. They believe that if workers have clear direction and well-aligned incentives, they should have all they need to do their jobs.
In geekwork, this approach doesn't work. The interpretation of the environment serves as the informational bedrock that supports leaders' efforts to nurture motivation, provide internal coordination, and furnish external representation.
If some of the questions of environmental ambiguity sound familiar, they should. You may remember that the Context of Geek Leadership model describes the basic relationships among geeks, leaders, geekwork, the organizational environment, and the wider sociopolitical and economic environment. At the center of the model, geeks, leaders, and geekwork form an inseparable three-way relationship—the tripartite relationship. Environmental ambiguity deals with questions about the outer circles of the Context of Geek Leadership, the organizational and sociopolitical environment (see Figure 1.1 on page 14). In short, managing environmental ambiguity is all about setting the tripartite relationship in its broader context.
One of a geek leader's most important responsibilities is to interpret reality—to help followers make sense of the cacophony of hype, facts, opinions, rumors, ideas, and concepts that swirl around the workplace. In part, leaders become leaders by demonstrating the ability to make sense of the world and communicate their understandings to followers in compelling ways. Leaders have to make sense of the environment to chart the visionary course.
As leaders develop coherent understandings, they judge how to communicate them to their followers. Depending on the audience, this can be quite easy or rather complex. Geeks vary widely in the breadth of information that they absorb about the environment. In general, younger people understand and are satisfied with less information about the business and cultural environment than are more senior people. Determining the range of information is part of a leader's responsibility to communicate his interpretations in ways that are both understandable and compelling.
In order to communicate a reasonable picture of the environment, a leader may have to collect, interpret, and disseminate information on a wide variety of topics about the organizational and the sociopolitical environments. This may mean:
Framing organizational culture
Identifying political issues and factions
Anticipating the organization's responses to its environment
Describing the industry
Identifying customers
Characterizing competition
Analyzing stakeholders
Detecting technical trends
Making sense of the environment is not a one-time activity. Leaders constantly monitor new information and the ideas of others to validate or disconfirm their own. They must not be afraid to revise or completely change their interpretations, since failure to recognize environmental change is one of the most common ways to marginalize an enterprise. Both slow and steady or rapid discontinuous change can undermine ideas about the environment, leaving organizations vulnerable to competitors.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder beautifully captured the story of the creation of Data General's Eclipse MV/800 minicomputer. Throughout the rest of the chapter, this story illustrates the concepts of environmental ambiguity.
In 1978, Data General, the third largest minicomputer company in the world, was stung by industry leader Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) introduction of the VAX 11/780, the first 32-bit super-minicomputer. Although not surprised by the introduction, Data General was caught flat-footed. After several failed design projects, it did not have a competing machine and needed one badly.
During the mid-1970s, Data General split its engineering staff between two locations: the company headquarters in Westborough, Massachusetts, and a new facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The split had been very controversial. Many engineers refused to move their families to a new state and thus severely limited their careers. Not only had the department been split into two distant locations, but the work had been divided as well, with the Westborough group focused on maintaining and updating the older Eclipse line of computers while the new group worked on developing new designs for more exciting modern systems. Tom West headed up the Eclipse engineering group in Westborough that was designated to maintain the older systems.
Although the North Carolina team had been officially tasked with the job of designing Data General's first 32-bit super-mini, West wanted a shot at it too. Several times, he attempted to convince senior management to support the Eclipse group in creating an additional design, only to be shot down. Eventually, he came up with an interpretation of the environment that would prove compelling to both senior management and the engineers who would eventually work on the system that became known as the Eagle.
These are the key elements of his story:
Data General needs a 32-bit super-mini to compete effectively with DEC.
If the North Carolina design team fails again to complete a system, Data General will be in peril.
The Eclipse group will continue to maintain the Eclipse systems and won't try to build new systems, which is the task of the North Carolina team.
The Eclipse group will build a new 32-bit upgraded version of the current 16-bit Eclipse systems that remains backward-compatible with the older models.
The 32-bit Eclipse will be Data General's insurance policy in case the North Carolina team fails.
As leaders and geeks together develop clarity about the setting in which their tripartite relationship takes place, that clarity serves as the intangible foundation on which geekwork is performed. In a building, the foundation supports critical physical infrastructure, such as columns, walls, floors, plumbing, and electrical systems, that holds the building together and makes it work. Environmental clarity serves a similar function with geekwork, but the critical systems here are supporting ideas. Since geekwork is carried out through thought and creativity, it requires intellectual and emotional infrastructure. In addition to environmental clarity, these supporting ideas are purpose, identity, and meaning, which collectively I call the foundation for geekwork (see Figure 9.3).
The first idea that relies on environmental clarity is organizational purpose, which is a clearly articulated reason for being that remains constant even as products, strategies, and organizational structures change. Without a clear picture of the environment, it would be nearly impossible to outline a meaningful purpose.
Not every organization has a purpose, but more should. Many of the most successful companies and groups have a purpose that offers their customers, employees, investors, partners, and suppliers clarity about what they do and why. Purpose offers a sense of continuity to the organization and contributes to developing collective identity and individual meaning. It also contributes to the resolution of environmental ambiguity by answering the fundamental question, "Why are we here beyond just making money?"
Don't confuse purpose with the other ideas that are commonly held up as the big conceptually supporting structures of an organization such as strategy, product, values, or goals. Each is different from purpose. Strategy is a long-term, high-level approach to the problems and markets that drives activity selection within a company. It may change as purpose stays constant. Products are just the collection of physical products and services that a company bundles together to meet the needs of a customer. They shift even more frequently than strategy does. And although they are an expression of a strategy, they are neither a strategy unto themselves nor a purpose. Values are the core principles that drive decision making. These can be just as stable as purpose, but they do not answer the question, "Why are we here?" Rather, they focus on the question, "How will we act while we are here?" Goals are measurable indicators of progress toward fulfilling purpose, but not a purpose in themselves. For example, if your organization's purpose is "to improve human life through the application of biotechnology," a goal may be "to bring an antimalaria drug to market by the end of the decade that can be easily afforded in Third World countries."
A well-defined purpose concentrates lots of information about an organization into a very short statement. By answering the question, "Why are we here?" many of the other fundamental questions of environmental ambiguity are answered by implication. Purpose communicates information on such other questions as, "Whom do we serve?" "What value we deliver?" and "What are our core values?"
Tom West defined several purposes for Data General's Eagle project and emphasized different ones to different audiences. To the company's senior executives, he emphasized that the project was primarily an insurance policy against the failure of the North Carolina team. To the team members, his purpose took on a more urgent tone. To them, he expressed confidence that the North Carolina team would fail again and that the Eagle was the only hope for Data General's future success. For the team, the purpose of the Eagle was to save the company.
The ideas of organizational environment and purpose influence the development of the next important idea, identity. Both group and, to a lesser degree, individual identity provide essential support to geekwork.
Throughout life, each of us must grapple with issues of identification and self-concept. Although most intense during childhood and adolescence, self-definition does not end after high school. We constantly revise our own internalized image of ourselves as we grow, learn, and change throughout life. Self-concept provides us information about who we are, how we act, who others are, and how we expect to interact with them.
Without going too far into psychological theory, we can describe two distinct sources of identity: associations with groups of other individuals and internalized individual beliefs and values. You develop a sense of who you are through a combination of what you believe and whom you associate with.
Group Affiliation. The first influence on the sense of identity is group affiliation. These groups can be any collection of people, like professional associations, political parties, families, or community groups. Through these associations, you may identify yourself in many different ways simultaneously. For example, you may consider yourself to be a native Chicagoan, a Catholic, a Rotarian, a Cubs fan, a University of California Los Angeles alumnus or alumna, and an American citizen. Each association carries with it an image of members of that group that defines a standard set of characteristics with which you may identify. When you adopt some of the characteristics of the image of group members, you have modified your identity through the influence of affiliation.
In industrial and postindustrial societies, one's work identity becomes an important part of the pastiche that is postmodern adult self-identification. And so today, a geek may identify with a variety of groups in the work environment, including company, department, project team, and functional specialty, but may also identify with extraorganizational groups too, such as industry associations or groups only loosely defined by technical specialty or certification. The more important that work is in their lives, the more geeks build some of their own internal self-image by adopting characteristics from each of their work group affiliations.
On the Eagle project, the team members began to derive a sense of identity from association with the project. Huddled together in the dingy basement of corporate headquarters, the team members developed a strong sense of affiliation with the project in general and also with their subgroup. The team had been divided into two distinct groups that took on separate responsibilities, and they developed separate identities. Each group even got its own nickname. The "Hardy Boys," as they became known, designed the hardware for the new system. The "Micro Kids" spent their time writing the intricate software known as microcode.
Personal Values and Attitudes. The other influence on identity comes from internalized personalized values and attitudes. Values and attitudes represent the standards, patterns, or principles one applies to assessing the desirability of things, events, and people. We all have our personal opinions about what makes something desirable, and for each person, these patterns of evaluation tend to be relatively stable over time. In Chapter Two, we talked about some of the more common values and attitudes among geeks, such as the passion for reason, love for puzzles, and the importance of independence. These values and attitudes are complex combinations of emotions, experience, reason, and faith. Many of these find their beginnings in our family of origin, while others are experientially developed, adopted from group affiliations, or learned.
What's important about these values and attitudes is that each individual in the workplace uses a personal lens through which he or she views work and organization. Based on their understanding of the environment and the organization's purpose and culture, they evaluate the importance of their work, the desirability of the organization, and the nobility of its purpose. Each individual's values and attitudes influence whether that person finds meaning in their work.
Tom West recruited young engineers for his project, mostly fresh from college. He wanted junior people not yet tainted with the cynicism of office politics who were eager to build new systems. He felt it important that the engineers on the project have an undiminished passion for creation, as well as some naiveté about the ambitious scope of the technological and schedule goals for the project. So he selected team members based in part on their attitude toward creativity and the priority they placed on work.
The last of the supporting ideas is that of finding meaning in work. Some people look to their work to contribute meaning to their lives, and some don't. For some, punching the time clock and taking home a paycheck is all the meaning that they expect from work. They don't look to their work life to help give their lives significance.
That's a relatively rare attitude for geeks, especially for those who work on products. Geeks yearn for meaning. They spend most of their waking hours thinking about and manipulating symbols, and at some level, most want their work to symbolize more than just a paycheck. If they don't find meaning in their work, they will look for it elsewhere. At the same time, geeks don't want to talk openly about meaning or spirituality at work. But don't let that fool you. There is a craving for significance that geek leaders must acknowledge and fill without getting too touchy-feely.
Meaning develops through viewing the rest of the ideas in the foundation through the lens of individual values and attitudes. The more a person sees in those ideas that support and fulfill his or her desires and values, the more work will feel meaningful. For example, if one of your core values is that you enjoy serving others, then if your job includes client contact with appreciative users, you are more likely to find meaning in your work than if your job was solely to sit in a cubicle all day and code without ever contacting users.
Because meaning is a very individual reaction, leaders don't get direct control over how others evaluate the environment. They may be able to influence followers' interpretation of the workplace, but not their complex emotional responses to it. If geeks are to find meaning in work, it will be rooted in their views of the ideas in the foundation for geekwork.
It's difficult to say exactly what meaning each person on the Eagle project drew from their participation, but from Kidder's descriptions in Soul of a New Machine and subsequent press interviews, two themes seemed prominent. First, most team members felt that being part of the group that would save the company gave them a sense of importance; their work had significance. Second, they felt that successfully completing the project would earn them the right to do it again—to participate in the design of another completely new system, the ultimate reward for a geek.
The ideas in the foundation provide conceptual and emotional support for the responsibilities of the geek leader. While environmental clarity and organizational purpose assist a leader's efforts to furnish external representation and provide internal coordination, the entire foundation becomes involved in supporting his attempts to nurture motivation (see Figure 9.4).
Internal coordination is supported by the two ideas in the foundation that geek leaders have the most direct influence on: environmental clarity and organizational purpose. You may recall from Chapter Seven that internal coordination carries two categories of responsibilities: establishing and maintaining the work environment and facilitating tasks. The foundation for geekwork supports leaders' ability to fill both needs.
In establishing and maintaining the work environment, a solid foundation helps an organization to be efficient and effective. First, let's look at effectiveness. Due to both the nature of geeks and the constraints of geekwork, most technology organizations need to make many decentralized decisions. The knowledge inversion where geeks know more about the details of their work than their leaders makes it difficult to centralize most decisions, and the independent nature of geeks makes it undesirable. But making effective decisions in a decentralized environment is possible only when everyone involved has a clear understanding of the environment and the organization's purpose. The clarity and consistency of foundational information make it possible for disparate groups to apply similar priorities to their problems while also delivering more effective decisions that harness the creativity and insight of more people.
A well-managed foundation also serves to help leaders with conflict resolution. When problems arise between group members, a common understanding of the environment can become the basis on which issues are resolved. A good deal of conflict within project teams results from different interpretations of the environment and the best responses to it, so a common understanding of the conceptual foundation can help prevent and resolve conflicts.
A common understanding of the environment and organizational purpose also assists in making groups efficient. Due to time constraints on projects, most geekwork requires parallel work efforts. Project teams must work on many aspects of a problem simultaneously rather than tackle one thing at a time. But to keep everyone heading in the same direction while making reasonably coordinated decisions, each person needs that common understanding of environment and purpose. The assumptions and interpretations made in managing environmental ambiguity make it possible for geekwork to be done without a completely centralized management structure.
In facilitating tasks, the foundation is supportive in several ways. It can help to set meaningful goals that garner the commitment of geeks. Goals that aren't tied to a common understanding of the environment tend to be ignored. Those that have clear ties to external constraints or competition make more sense than just arbitrary targets. Many times I've seen executives set deadlines for projects that seem arbitrary to geeks, and so the geeks work at whatever pace they think appropriate, without regard for the deadline. When project teams understand the reasons for a time or budget goal, they are much more likely to work to meet it.
The foundation also helps with setting and communicating the priorities for resource allocation. In an organization where there is a shared understanding of environment and purpose, there are fewer questions about how priorities are being set, about why one project gets more people and money than another. The process is more transparent, and geeks generally feel that open decisions are more fair and easier to support, even if they don't like them.
Tom West's environmental clarity was essential to the team's functioning and efficiency. Although the team had been split into two groups, the organization was relatively unstructured. Within the subgroups, individuals took on responsibilities almost organically, without direction, just because they knew specific things had to be done. What guided them in taking on individual responsibility was not directives from above that tasks should be completed, but the team's recognition that they had to do these things in order to meet the constraints and goals that were given to them. Without a clear understanding of the environment, team members would have been completely reliant on managers for task specifications.
The ideas of the foundation support a geek leader's efforts in external representation in four key areas: aligning business with technology, acquiring resources, managing client expectations, and recruiting.
Perhaps most important, environmental clarity and purpose provide a clear conceptual basis for discussions about aligning technology with business. Without a clearly articulated interpretation of the environment, it would be very difficult to hold discussions with peers, superiors, and external partners. A leader would be part of discussions without a clear worldview or agenda to pursue.
Similarly, a clearly articulated purpose also becomes critical for a leader engaged in negotiating to acquire organizational resources. It is very difficult to make compelling cases for technology and staffing investments without a clear vision of how they would benefit and relate to the priorities of the rest of the organization.
Environmental clarity and organizational purpose also serve as a framework for managing client expectations. As projects progress, it often becomes necessary to make trade-offs between the business functions and technical scope of a product in order to bring the project to completion. Setting priorities in a consistent manner and gaining the consent of clients is much easier when you can deliver a compelling argument grounded in a complete picture of the environment. It can help to diffuse arguments over budgets, placing the discussions in a broader context of the good of the whole organization.
A well-managed foundation can also be used to help attract new geeks into the company. Since the ideas have already been developed to be compelling for geeks, the same ideas should prove attractive when recruiting outsiders.
Tom West found that environmental clarity and purpose were absolutely critical to the Eagle project. In fact, until he was able to supply them, the project could not occur. While his story was less than compelling, senior management rejected his proposals. Not until he came up with a more compelling interpretation of reality did they finally relent and fund the project.
Finally, all the ideas of the foundation support a leader's efforts to nurture motivation. You cannot directly motivate geeks, but you can try to create the conditions under which they motivate themselves.
Environmental clarity and organizational purpose support motivation by enabling geeks to work more independently. With a solid understanding of the environment, they are able to make their own decisions about day-to-day matters without having to check with the boss constantly. For geeks, who generally have a strong independent streak, autonomy fosters motivation.
Environmental clarity also creates the opportunity for engendering external competition. Targeting an external enemy both creates unity within groups and harnesses the machismo and competitive drive of geeks. Identifying the enemy is part of interpreting the environment.
All of the ideas of the foundation are critical in finding the meaning in work, which is one of the most important sources of intrinsic motivation. The dedication and commitment that come from doing work with a purpose higher than just delivering a paycheck is one of the most potent influences on the energy, enthusiasm, and drive with which geeks engage with their work. Without a solid foundation, meaning can be derived only from personal values and goals separate from the organization's. Without context, geeks are motivated by self-centered purposes.
The Eagle project team members were clearly motivated. Most practically gave up the rest of their lives for more than a year while the project progressed. So many voluntarily worked nights and weekends that eventually West had to make a rule that everyone was required to take Sundays off, fearing that the entire group would burn out.
This level of motivation and engagement resulted from the support of the foundation that he had built. Each individual viewed the ideas of the foundation through personal values to find meaning and motivation. For some, the mission of saving the company proved compelling. For others, the interesting nature of the work was reward enough. The sense of camaraderie that developed within the group contributed to their motivation, but for many, and especially for West, the sense of competition with the North Carolina team also proved critical.
So how did the Eagle project turn out? After more than a year of grueling work, the group managed to deliver the machine. The North Carolina team did eventually deliver its system, but not until much later than the Eagle. West's machine debuted in the spring of 1980 and sold well for several years. Unfortunately, Data General was not prepared for the personal computer revolution, and the company began a long decline.
Here are some thoughts about what you as a geek leader need to do to ensure that your group develops a solid foundation for geekwork:
Don't assume that geeks understand the environment. Many leaders assume that because geeks are smart, they have the same ideas about the environment as business leaders do. Usually it's not so. Generally, geeks expend most of their mental energy on technology rather than business.
Don't assume that geeks don't care about the environment. Too many leaders assume that because geeks spend so much energy on technology, they don't care about other things. Often they do care, but just don't find environmental issues as engaging as the technical ones.
Discuss and debate interpretations of the environment openly. Leaders need to initiate conversations with geeks about the outside world, both to monitor what geeks know and think and to engage them in developing clarity.
Frame technical issues in business terms. Use discussions about technical issues to link technology and business. The more often you can link them up, the better geeks will understand the direct connections between their technical world and the external environment.
Fundamental Questions
What is ambiguity, and why is it important to geek leaders?
What types of ambiguity must be managed?
Why do geeks need to know so much about their environment?
Key Ideas
The most important and subtle role of a geek leader is managing ambiguity.
Ambiguity occurs within geek organizations at three levels described by the Hierarchy of Ambiguity model: environmental, structural, and task.
Environmental ambiguity encompasses the big-picture questions behind all geekwork, including issues of identity, purpose, and meaning.
Resolving environmental ambiguity helps provide a foundation of ideas on which individual and collective motivation can form.
The key ideas of the foundation for geekwork are environmental clarity, organizational purpose, individual and group identity, and meaning.