ABSTRACT

Heraclitus in the second-century BC proposed the harmony of opposites in which he suggests that things can contain opposite qualities. Ancient Chinese Daoist philosophy also contains the concept of a combined Yin and Yang of equal and opposite qualities. In Dickens’ first lines from A Tale of Two Cities his compresence of opposites presents the readers with a paradox. The sensemaking stories of leaders develop as a continuous stream and contain a mix of opposites. In some cases the mix of opposites is Heraclitan or Daoist in the sense that leaders retrospectively construct stories in which the opposites are reconciled. The compresence of opposites is not something that interventionists should be trying to get leaders to avoid but rather to be actively encouraged as an aid to sensemaking that leads to mindset change.