“Nothing is so practical as a good
theory.”
-
Kurt Lewin, social psychologist and Action
Researcher
What is theory?
Theory is that insight for guiding educated guesses across
complex and shifting conditions, a road map, or the central lens for policy and
decision making. Theory is background
intelligence, the logic system that tells us what to do and why we are doing
it, in any given situation. Tell me why,
and I’ll then understand what I need to do.
Simply, it’s the ruling premise of anything: person, place, philosophy,
artifact, time period, culture.
Understand it, and you have the key to predicting its workings, history,
and effects. And in relationship to
other concepts, an added plus.
Then why does the term sound so forbidding, abstract,
nonessential, or difficult?
It shouldn’t be, because theory is “high concept” or theme,
detailed as a holistic explanation of why things are, how they work, (or are
designed to work), and how they can be expected to operate into the future,
making theory immeasurably valuable as predictive as well as descriptive. “Theory of mind” tells us how to read
people’s thinking in order to know what to expect they will do as an outcome,
and more important, why. Theory of
negotiation formulates the purpose of deal-making, as in MGA, the Mutual Gains Approach. Theory of second-best deals with suboptimal
systems or system parts to make decisions about how to upgrade effectiveness in
a factory, economy, or organization. As engineer
W. Edwards Deming drew the equation, “Rational behavior requires theory.”
Still – what is the problem people have with the
theoretical? Why is the term so
off-putting rather than instantly welcome?
Theory is comprehensive and systematic …so it’s not enough
to explain one event or condition (“I have a theory about why everyone is so
depressed today….”). It must explain not
just one occurrence but a whole series, and how each event relates to others as
well as the larger environment. Gravity,
for instance, in Newton’s theory.
Evolution explains the origins of life and species development and
diversification over time. Quantum
mechanics does the math to explain motion and interaction at the subatomic
level, far from the intuitive physics experienced in daily life. Creative problem-solving theory outlines the
way ideas can be generated and selected by groups (primarily) to evolve optimal
potentials that can produce workable solutions.
The best sense of theoretical isn’t speculative – it’s
comprehensive intelligence, systematically worked out to describe and explain
how and why things operate.
In another domain, detective fiction looks for a theory to
explain how the crime was committed, and by whom, through absorbing clues that
make sense within a larger view that will include all important persons,
motives, and incidents. Reviewing the
narrative or action, the reader must work to construct and test this theory in
parallel with the detective’s speculations and investigations, while forming
his own ideas that might vary from the detective’s. The crime theory provides the handle (grip,
focus) that affords the ability to see what fits as well as what doesn’t belong
in the solution universe. Within the
crime scene and world of motives and characters, the story weaves a matrix to
understand the dynamics of the total system.
In this sense, theory is the discovered mind of any black box that can
be reverse- engineered to crack the case.
Design theory acts like a well-conceived theme in bringing
to life an environment. It allows the
artist to make optimal decisions for any aspect of that design, because it
instantly tells you if things fit in or fail to fit. Assuming a solid understanding of what you
are trying to construct, and for what purpose, creates strategy and tactics. If it’s a midcentury modern house, then Tudor
detailing is out. Good artistic
direction operates by design theory that knows one style from another. Does any given style or action fit into the
theme? Theory is useful to answering yes
or no, seeing direction and where to go next, discerning if it’s on or
off-track, working backwards from the mind of the design. If you want a positive vision of the future,
lose the dark dystopian spikey designs from Disneyland Paris; if not, then fine. Without a good working theory, there is no
strategy, no battle plan. That means no
way of relating stock buys, marketing moves, career direction, college choice,
even time management must be informed in some way about what you want to
accomplish in a day, a month, a year, or, as BF Skinner wanted to plan his
life, the next ten years.
In business, it’s not even enough to know your objective –
you need theory to give you a working strategy and the tactics to work
forward. The company directive to
“increase profits 20%” sounds good – but directives aren’t directions. How will this happen, and how will it affect
every other part of the system? Is this
a short-time goal that will act adversely against longer-term values,
relationships, and objectives? The adage
of social science rules the dynamics of any system: you can’t just change one
thing. What must be measured against
this 20% gain? That depends on your
theory of profitability versus success.
If the goal is not just profits but long-term value (as Disneyland proved to
create in 1955), this theory approach requires strategies divergent from the most
common quarterly guidance to cut costs, decrease risk, and tune up
productivity. And what you measure is
what you get more of.
In the study of culture, this adage couldn’t be more on the
mark. Culture is a master matrix of
thousands of systems—run by a basic checklist of values. Looking at it piecemeal won’t yield any
insight. It is the master idea that
drives story-telling. All parts relate
to a major subject and theme, giving a design template for generating ideas and
processing information. Cultural analysts
(like us) ask basic questions devised to elicit answers to clarify: What is jewelry for? Marriage, children, work, money, time,
energy, profit, change, belief? The research
answers demonstrate the essence and power of theory—the thinking framework behind
understanding where any culture has been, what it wants, and where it is headed
led by its cultural credo, its value DNA.
There are simply too many facts, choices, agendas, purposes,
and goals active at any point to make sense of any of the big picture. That means we need ways to clarify the big
themes that make sense of the detail, to clarify the larger purpose. Academic approaches tend to make things more
complex, not more clearly simple. We
need a theory of culture to do that: arriving at organizing principles to sort
out “unrelated” material to profile meaning, purpose, and direction, in culture
at large as well as in design and creativity.
The alternative is random file folders without links or logic. We have plenty of those already.
