Our minds are a complex system with many interdependent parts. With Iain McGilchrist, I will assume that that we have access to two modes of thinking (which are primarily connected to the left/right hemisphere).
- Analytical thinking, encompassing logic, language, and structured analysis. This kind of thinking works in a conceptual domain. These are often things we can say in words – propositional thinking.
- The other mode of thinking is holistic, experiential, or intuitive thinking. This kind of thinking is primarily connected to the right hemisphere of the brain and operates in the realm of implicit knowledge, emotions, physical sensations, and visual images. It involves understanding context, recognizing patterns, and grasping the overall meaning of situations.
In an oversimplification, we could say that the left brain thinks and the right brain senses.
Explicit and implicit
Another useful word pair is explicit and implicit – and they might even refer to the same polarity. Something is explicit when it has been expressed in words. “Explicit” stems from “untangle”. With language, with reduce complexity and divide into less ambiguous spaces of what something is or isn’t.
Since something explicit is “something that is clearly stated with no room for ambiguity”, language as accessed by the left brain is the most appropriate tool. (The right brain has access to language too. For example we need it to grasp metaphors.)
- Explicit: These are the conscious and describable (propositional) factors. For example, to make a collective choice, we often rely on explicit processes that help with information sharing (e.g. meeting facilitation), sense-making as exploration bouncing off of each other, and collective choice making (often in the form of decision-making). The conditions for the third category is something I looked at in my book Collective Power.
- Implicit: But there is also the non-explicit. For example, the group might have its own unique voice and style that can’t be attributed to any individual within the group. We can’t put our finger on it and we can’t linearly design it. This area is often described as culture.
It’s hard to separate the two, just like it’s hard to separate thinking and feeling. “Thinking” always means an oscillation and interplay between both modes.
Implicate come from the folding something in. Explicate means to unfold something and look at the details.
In thinking about this, we have to watch our to make the implicit not simply the negation of the explicit.*
Implicit and explicit are not simply opposites with “words” either being absent or present but rather describe different manners in which information or meaning can be presented or understood – either folded within, as in “implicit,” or unfolded and laid out openly, as in “explicit.”
Instead, implicit seems to speak more to the holistic gestalt, the essential nature of an entity.
That underlines that conceptual language does not have primacy; instead, direct experience does. The thinking of “in the beginning was the word” which seems to assign language primacy got us on the track of dismissing primacy of experience, leaving behind meaning (see Vervaeke).
*The prefix “im-” in “implicare” is not a negation in this context. Unlike the English prefix “un-” which often negates the meaning of the word it precedes (e.g., “happy” vs. “unhappy”), the Latin prefix “im-” in “implicare” serves to intensify or indicate direction inward or into. Thus, “implicare” translates more directly to “to fold in” or “to entwine,” implying involvement or enfoldment rather than negation.
Explicit and implicit in groups
If something is explicit when it’s expressed in words, then the counterparts in groups are the explicit rules of the group. That might mean bylaws or policies guiding the behavior within the group.
| individual | group |
| explicit: language | explicit: policies and guidelines |
| implicit: sensing/feeling | implicit: culture and body |
This follows the basic assumption by Edgar Schein in “Culture as the Unconscious Mind of the Organization” (part of his 1985 book “Organizational Culture and Leadership”). In this chapter, Schein proposes that an organization’s culture functions similarly to the unconscious mind of an individual. While this is an oversimplification, of course, it’s useful to understand that – in my words – that there are more ways of knowing that just the explicit.
The implicit – culture – includes things like dress codes, rituals, underlying assumptions, and built environment. It’s much more than one can list! But just like countless factors distribute to our well-being as an body organism, there are countless factors that contribute to the well-being of a collective organism. Yet, it influences behavior, how people interact, how decisions are made, what the organization pays attention to and where resources are steered.
The implicit and speed
Here is a confession. In my book Collective Power, I was keen on spelling out the explicit rules we can make to clarity where power lies and how it can be carried out. And I still think that’s valid and important.
Yet, during that project, I also knew that it would be too slow for an organization to make explicit all the rules of operating. I suggested that everything can remain implicit as long as it’s working but needs to be made explicit as soon as we notice that an intervention is needed.
The implication is that as a starting point, we need a system where everything is allowed and “unregulated” by default. From a governance angle, that means we have to give operations and “unregulated” activity primacy just like, on an indiviual level, immediate experience has primacy over the explicit and language-based. First do; then intervene on an as-needed basis. If we’re able to make best use of the implicit and run on culture as much as possible, it will be faster than running on explicit rules.
Using culture in our favor reminds of the work of Kaneman. In “Thinking fast, thinking slow”. Kaneman describes two systems:
- System 1 uses automatic and intuitive thinking. It’s fast and can handle a lot of information at once – but it’s also prone to bias.
- System 2, on the other hand, is analytical, slow and takes a lot of effort.
We solve simple math questions with System 1, to fire up System 2 only when we notice we can’t solve it “just like that” or when we realize we made a mistake. An organization can act the same way – try it on “instinct only” and then kick into action with more group process and words as needed.
I claim that this works best in a self-managed approach where individual agency is allowed (unless it’s explicitly not). We start from a frame of “yes” and only add “no’s” as needed. Starting with a yes is much easier in a non-coercive (power-with) paradigm based on free choice because people act based on their intrinsic motivation and instinct instead of being nudged to act by rules or policies.
What comes to mind is ritualized practices. While a new practice might be learned conceptually (by reading an article, for example), we can internalize it into our muscle memory via embodied practice. That’s why practices are key to connect conceptual thinking and deeper/other ways of knowing. For example, we might explain rounds – the concept of speaking one by one in sociocracy and related systems – via language, but the change in the organization doesn’t come from teaching about rounds or by making a policy about rounds. Instead, the change happens via recurring practice. That way, something that might have been “cerebral” at first, can become an embodied feature of the organization.
That’s why in my exploration of social technologies, I focus on those that come with practices, not merely conceptual constructs.
Wiser organizations 
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