Modern work culture is suffocating under the weight of its own productivity dogma. In a compelling recent HBR article, Megan Reitz and John Higgins make the case for what they call “spacious thinking” — a more expansive mode of attention that invites insight, reflection, creativity, and relationship-building. But their call to action, while urgent and well-evidenced, misses one crucial point: thinking spaciously isn’t just a managerial permission issue. It’s an archetypal blind spot in today’s organizational cultures.
Over 60 years ago, Arthur Koestler exposed this gap in The Act of Creation (1964), where he introduced three essential archetypes in the creative process: Jester, Sage, and Artist. In my forthcoming book Serendipity Unleashed – Hidden Wisdom of the Jesters (out November 2025), I present a vision and framework to respond to this challenge.
We need the 21st Century Jester — now more than ever.
The Tyranny of Doing Mode
Reitz and Higgins identify two core modes of attention at work:
- Doing Mode: Narrow, urgent, efficiency-driven. Get it done. Tick the box.
- Spacious Mode: Expansive, curious, reflective. Ask why. Sense possibilities. Reframe challenges.
. Their research — including a global survey of over 3,000 employees, ongoing dialogues with 50 professionals worldwide, and in-depth interviews with leaders and their teams — reveals a troubling paradox: Employees striving to excel often fear that stepping into spacious mode will be interpreted as a lack of urgency or efficiency. Why? Because in most organizational cultures, pausing feels risky — even career-limiting. Without explicit permission, most people simply won’t dare go there.
Even more tellingly, their findings show that the higher up we are in the hierarchy, the more we believe we are open to hearing others — when in reality, we’re often not. Similarly, in their experience facilitating meetings, leaders consistently underestimate how much airtime they consume.
I especially appreciate the authors’ honesty when they admit:
“And though the team’s to-do list gets ticked off, there is no way of knowing whether those to-dos were the right ones, no space for a team to grow, no joy or interest to discover what is possible. This can suck the life out of a team.”
You rarely encounter such a courageous admission — one that captures the very dilemma Gary Klein explores in his brilliant book Seeing What Others Don’t – The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights (2013). It’s the same dynamic I’ve come to call the battle of arrows. That battle — between efficiency and insight, speed and reflection — ultimately inspired me to develop a new approach: Serendipity Management. A flexible, emergent alternative to traditional project management, it opens space for discovery, adaptability, and yes — the arrival of the unexpected insight that changes everything.
Enter the Jester: License to Reframe
Reitz and Higgins have concluded in their February 2025 HBR article that spacious mode – and taking pauses – leads to critical benefits in the workplace such as 1) gaining insight into challenges 2) thinking strategically, 3) spotting opportunities, 4) building relationships, and 5) sparking joy and motivation
In my forthcoming book I elaborate exactly this same questions and introduce the 21st Century Jester archetype tightly embedded in “Smile in Mind” organizational framework. In my vision the 21st Century Jester isn’t just a cultural ornament or comedic relief. The 21st Century Jester is a catalyst of insight, a conductor of idea flows (to borrow Alex Pentland’s Social Physics term), and a guardian of cognitive spaciousness. Where leaders and employees fear ambiguity, the jester dances in it.
“If you asked a jester to ‘think outside the box’, he would probably ask ‘what box?’” – Beatrice Otto (2001)
The jester embodies the very behaviors that Reitz and Higgins urge leaders to adopt:
- They focus on ideas, not tasks.
- They bring in novelty, surprise, and symbolic inversion.
- They challenge groupthink with loyalty but independence.
- They legitimize ambiguity without needing managerial permission.
Spacious Mode as the Seedbed of Serendipity
We’ve long emphasized that serendipity isn’t just about lucky breaks or magical coincidences. It is, as Merton defined it, a quality of mind — one that thrives in the liminal spaces between focused effort and open receptivity. Spacious mode, as defined by Reitz and Higgins, is precisely where this quality can grow. But it needs a protector. A person who signals, through their presence, that it is safe to not know yet.
This is the Jester’s role:
- to protect the liminal
- to cultivate the pause, respect the “reculer pour mieux sauter” thinking *
- to question the obvious
- and to trigger bisociation—Koestler’s foundational mechanism for creativity.
As indicated above Serendipity Management is one of the essential capacities embedded in the Smile in Mind organization (chapter 5 in the forthcoming book) — a living system where idea flows, collective intelligence, and adaptive action thrive. And who orchestrates this flow? The 21st Century Jester — not a sideshow act, but the master of Serendipity Management.
Koestler explains in The Act of Creation, true originality emerges not from refining what we already know, but from bisociating between different frames of reference — often in tension with habitual thought patterns. The table below summarizes this clash. It’s a concise diagnosis of why spacious thinking feels so difficult in today’s organizations — and why the Jester is its natural antidote. (Table modified and interpreted based on Arthur Koestler’s original comparison in The Act of Creation (1964), pp. 659–660.)
|
Aspect
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Habit
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Originality
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|---|---|---|
|
Mental Process
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Association within the confines of a given matrix
|
Bisociation of independent matrices
|
|
Guidance
|
Pre-conscious or extra-conscious processes
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Sub-conscious processes normally under restraint
|
|
System State
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Dynamic equilibrium
|
Activation of regenerative potentials
|
|
Flexibility
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Rigid to flexible variations on a theme
|
Super-flexibility (reculer pour mieux sauter)
|
|
Outcome
|
Repetitiveness
|
Novelty
|
|
Temperament
|
Conservative
|
Destructive-Constructive (restructuring of mental organization)
|
|
Epistemological Role
|
Reasoning by habit, level-headedness
|
Sudden illumination, cathartic “Eureka” experiences
|
|
Social Functioning
|
Adaptive, enlightened conservatism
|
Revolutionary — may discard entire frameworks (e.g., phlogiston, epicycles)
|
In Koestler’s terms, the Jester embodies originality not as occasional brilliance but as a way of being. They challenge repetition, encourage paradox, and destabilize stale scripts. And that brings us to the next blind spot…
The Cultural Allergy to Spaciousness
One of the most illuminating insights in the article is the concept of advantage blindness: the higher you are in the hierarchy, the more you think you’re approachable. Leaders believe they’re granting space for open thinking, while their teams feel the opposite. Therefore leaders overestimate how approachable they are and how able those lower on the hierarchy are to choose their own course of action.
This disconnect is structural, not personal. The 21st Century Jester disrupts that structure. With no formal power and no career ladder to climb, they serve as a cultural pressure valve and a mirror. They mock doing-mode mania. They slow things down so better questions can be asked. In a world trapped in performative ‘busyness’, the 21st Century Jester invites Kairos – the God of opportune moment – to the stage, precisely when everyone else is stuck in the script. He does that by reclaiming the courage to pause, reflect, and then act with resonance.
Jesterhood as Leadership Amplifier
The authors call on leaders to:
- Ask more reflective questions
- Introduce novelty and safe failure
- Recognize those who pause, challenge, and reflect
We would go one step further. Leaders should not just perform these behaviors. They should invite 21st Century Jester into the system. Formally or informally. Temporarily or permanently. Symbolically or structurally. Whether in the form of a Chief Jester, a rotating role, or simply a culturally endorsed personality type, the presence of the Jester acts as a cognitive permission slip for spacious mode.
A Final Note: Spacious Thinking is Collective
In Chapter 5 of my book, I introduce the concept of Smile in Mind organizations—spaces where serendipity can emerge through collective awareness, improved idea flows, and mutual trust. Spacious thinking is not a solo act. It is social oxygen. It must be modelled, mirrored, and defended. The Jester is its best defender.
So, next time someone tells you to “think outside the box,” channel your inner Jester and ask: “What box?”
Then smile. In your mind.
-
“take a step back to leap forward” in English.
