Coherence also includes the more structured information technology of the firm, the hardwiring of the business through which the various parts communicate. When making sense revolves around a point of view held in common by those who need to act, coordinated action can occur without the need for coercive control. The group becomes more effective because it no longer requires significant energy to be expended on such coercion or the threat of it. The freedup energy can be devoted to useful tasks. At the firm level, the process is similar as it applies not only individual by individual, but also group by group, business unit by business unit.
Coherence is the antidote to uncertainty.
In organizations, uncertainty is evidenced by an unwillingness to act. Once the will exists, so too does the certainty. A coherent perspective increases the willingness and reduces the periods of uncertainty. And coherence is tolerant of that kind of ambiguity described by the scientist and writer Arthur Koestler as the sudden interlocking of two previously unrelated skills or matrices of thought. Just as the creative fusion of ideas can occur by holding seemingly antithetical ideas in the mind simultaneously, so creative collaboration between people can occur by an effort to retain conflicting cultural and disciplinary viewpoints in the mind without discarding one or allowing either to dominate.