See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE
See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE
See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE
From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 27 (Unpblished):
Without forcing,
It flows.
Travelers move with It,
and the journey unfolds.
Artists create,
and the work appears.
Scientists inquire,
and clarity comes.
The skillful stay with It,
and change unfolds.
—
Most of us do not have a philosophy problem. We have a pacing problem.
We move too fast for what reality can support, or we hesitate long after movement is required. Then we experience the consequences and call them stress, burnout, dysfunction, difficult people, organizational politics, resistance to change, uncertainty, polarization, or bad timing.
Though underneath many of those experiences sits a simpler tension:
when to direct and when to allow.
That tension runs through Chapter 27 of the Tao Te Ching and through much of life itself. Lao Tzu points toward wu wei here, which unfortunately gets translated as “non-action” often enough that people start imagining Taoism as a philosophy of passivity or disengagement.
That has not been my experience of reality.
Life requires action. Leadership requires action. Relationships, parenting, organizations, democracy, citizenship, coaching, consulting, and trying to participate responsibly in the world all require movement, intervention, decisions, boundaries, and effort.
The deeper question is whether our effort is aligned with what is actually unfolding or whether we are trying to overpower reality into matching the pace, certainty, or outcome we already decided we wanted.
I learned some of this through consequences I would not recommend.
There was a consulting engagement years ago where I became so certain I knew what the organization needed that I pushed my frameworks harder than the system could absorb. The analysis was accurate. The recommendations were sound. The pacing was catastrophic.
I was directing without allowing. Moving without listening. Trying to force outcomes faster than relationships could support them.
Three key leaders left within six months. Not because the strategy was wrong. Because I had violated the rhythm the system needed in order to integrate change. I optimized for speed at the cost of trust.
At the time, I called it driving results.
The people leaving probably used different language.
I have failed the other direction too. After burning out teams through excessive directing, I overcorrected into what I thought was wisdom. I became so committed to “allowing things to unfold” that I stopped providing the direction systems actually needed. Projects drifted. Decisions softened. Ambiguity expanded. Reflection slowly replaced responsibility.
Eventually I realized I was making the same mistake from the opposite direction.
Wu wei is not passivity.
Wu wei is the practice of acting in alignment with what is actually unfolding instead of forcing reality to conform to your preferred timeline.
You still act.
You still decide.
You still move things forward.
Though your relationship to force changes.
Think about a skilled carpenter working with wood grain. The carpenter still cuts the wood. Skill does not disappear. Intention does not disappear. Action does not disappear. Though the relationship to resistance changes completely. The craft comes from sensing the grain and working with it instead of trying to overpower it.
That is much closer to wu wei.
And honestly, I think this chapter becomes increasingly important the more complex and accelerated modern life becomes.
Organizations optimize for speed, scale, productivity, execution, and measurable outcomes. Politics increasingly rewards certainty and emotional activation more than discernment or reflection. Social media accelerates reaction faster than human nervous systems can metabolize thoughtfully. AI systems are designed primarily to optimize, accelerate, execute, and reduce friction.
Allow slowly starts looking inefficient inside systems organized around acceleration.
Though many of the capacities human beings most need under conditions of complexity emerge through space rather than force:
trust,
discernment,
ethical reflection,
creativity,
psychological safety,
adaptive learning,
and the ability to remain relational while conditions shift underneath us.
I keep seeing this tension appear in conversations around AI adoption. Early on, the attraction makes perfect sense. Faster analysis. Faster workflows. Faster communication. Less ambiguity. More output. More optimization.
Then gradually another pattern appears.
People begin feeling managed by systems instead of supported by them. The room for emergence starts shrinking. Reflection becomes harder to justify. Human beings become expected to operate at machine pacing while still somehow maintaining the emotional regulation, discernment, creativity, and relational capacity healthy systems require.
That arrangement carries consequences.
Because human beings remain biological creatures living inside increasingly inorganic systems. We still require pacing, reflection, recovery, conversation, meaning-making, and time for patterns to reveal themselves.
AI can optimize astonishing amounts of information.
Optimization and wisdom have never been identical.
One of the defining leadership questions emerging now may be whether human beings retain enough discernment to recognize when acceleration itself is degrading the conditions required for good judgment.
That question extends far beyond organizations.
Authoritarian systems understand the power of over-directing exceptionally well. Flood the environment with urgency, outrage, certainty, speed, and emotional activation long enough and eventually people lose the capacity for discernment underneath the overload. Complexity narrows into tribes, slogans, enemies, certainty, and perpetual reaction cycles.
The pace itself becomes destabilizing.
Steadiness starts disappearing.
And Steadiness matters.
Steadiness holds direction when conditions become volatile. It protects purpose, values, commitments, and relational trust from being pulled apart every time circumstances shift.
Fluidity matters just as much. Fluidity adjusts. Learns. Adapts. Responds to changing conditions. It creates room for emergence and discovery.
This is why the polarity underneath Chapter 27 feels so important:
Direct AND Allow.
Steadiness AND Fluidity.
Direct gives shape.
Allow creates space.
Steadiness holds coherence.
Fluidity keeps systems responsive enough to adapt before rigidity turns into fracture.
I increasingly trust leaders who know how to move between those capacities responsively instead of becoming over-identified with one side. The people I trust most are rarely the loudest, fastest, or most performative people in the room. They are usually the people capable of holding direction steadily while remaining responsive enough to adjust before force starts damaging the larger whole they are trying to serve.
That kind of leadership rarely looks dramatic in the moment.
Though over time it tends to build something increasingly rare:
trust that the system can remain adaptive without losing coherence,
and responsive without losing itself.
Without forcing,
It flows.
That line lands differently for me now than it once did.
Especially in a world increasingly organized around acceleration, optimization, reaction, certainty, and force.
Because eventually every living system reaches a point where pushing harder stops producing wisdom and starts producing consequences.
And reality always gets a vote.
Here’s a Polarity Map for Direct And Allow:
INVITATIONS:
Try the AI-trained “Chat w/Cliff” for Step 1, Seeing, CLICK HERE.
If you want to take a quick self-assessment for Direct And Allow? CLICK HERE – the results include Leveraging Action Steps and Early Warnings (to support maximizing upside benefits and minimizing downside limitations).
Want to go deeper into Polarity Thinking? See our online self-directed Credentialing and Introduction to Polarity Practice, CLICK HERE.
