The Urge to Resolve

The Urge to Resolve

Tension is uncomfortable. Every instinct tells us to make it go away. But what if that instinct is misleading us?

Tension Is Everywhere

In any complex endeavor, you'll find tension:

- Speed vs. quality

- Short-term vs. long-term

- Exploration vs. exploitation

- Consistency vs. flexibility

- Individual needs vs. team needs

These tensions aren't problems to solve. They're features of complex systems. They don't go away—they have to be held.

The Resolution Instinct

When we feel tension, we want relief. Fast.

This instinct is powerful and often unconscious:

- "Let's just pick one and move on"

- "Can't we find a compromise?"

- "Why do we keep debating this?"

- "Just tell me what to do"

The urge to resolve is the urge to return to equilibrium, to discharge the discomfort of competing demands.

Why Resolution Often Fails

Here's the problem: many tensions can't be resolved—only managed.

When you "resolve" an unresolvable tension, you've actually just:

- Chosen one pole and suppressed the other

- Created conditions for the suppressed pole to resurface

- Set up the same debate to happen again later

The classic example: "We're going to focus on speed now." This resolves the tension momentarily. But quality problems emerge. Then: "We need to focus on quality now." Which creates speed problems. And around you go.

Premature Closure

The danger isn't that we sometimes resolve tensions. It's that we resolve them prematurely—before we understand what the tension is actually telling us.

Tension often contains information:

- About tradeoffs we haven't fully considered

- About constraints we haven't acknowledged

- About stakeholders whose needs we haven't heard

- About realities we'd prefer to ignore

Rushing to resolution throws away this information.

The Alternative

What if, instead of rushing to resolve, we learned to hold tension?

Holding tension doesn't mean inaction. It means:

- Acknowledging the competing demands

- Understanding what each pole is protecting

- Looking for moves that honor multiple truths

- Making choices with eyes open to tradeoffs

This is harder than quick resolution. It's also more honest.