Have you ever been simultaneously full of hope and completely panicked about your business? I’ve been there multiple times. The thrill of pending growth coupled with the anxiousness of the enormity of the tasks ahead. Felt like you’re both scaling and stalling at the same time? Thought your team is both aligned and completely confused, depending on the day, the department, or the mood in the lunchroom?
Congratulations. You may be experiencing superposition.
Now before you break out your dusty physics textbook or text your friend who still swears they “almost passed quantum,” let me break it down in business terms. And for those real physicists, I’m referring mainly to superposition from a quantum perspective, not from a wave theory, although they are somewhat intertwined.
Superposition is one of the weirder, cooler ideas in quantum mechanics. At its core, it means a system or a particle can exist in multiple states at once, until it’s observed. After observation (yes, the observer effect), it collapses into one definite state. In other words, you don’t really know what state it’s in until you look, and looking itself changes the result.
Sound familiar?
The Meeting That Changed Everything and Nothing
I was once in a strategy meeting where we left thinking we had alignment. People nodded. There were even a few awkward high-fives and fist pumps (because that’s what the younger generation does). But over the next week, three different departments executed three totally different plans, all thinking they were doing exactly what was agreed to.
The strategy was in a superposition. Until someone asked the hard questions, “Wait, what are we actually doing here?”, the plan remained both formed and unformed. Clarity and confusion existed at the same time.
This isn’t just bad communication. It’s quantum-level ambiguity.
Businesses in Superposition
Let’s take a closer look at some examples:
- Your Vision: You want to be nimble and scalable. You want to disrupt and maintain operational excellence. You want high innovation and no budget overruns. You are, in a word, superposed.
- Your People: A high performer might be both your future COO and your biggest cultural risk. Until you intervene, they’re both. The act of engaging with them, giving feedback, setting expectations, aligning roles, forces the state to collapse into one or the other.
- Your Metrics: Let’s talk KPIs. A metric might show green on the dashboard, but yellow in the gut. Until you investigate, dig deeper, talk to the floor or the client, that KPI exists in a comfortable superposition of maybe it’s fine and something’s off.
This is why I believe business leaders are part physicist, part therapist, and part magician. You’re constantly trying to make sense of overlapping possibilities and collapsing them into something tangible.
Why We Avoid Collapsing the State
Here’s the tricky part. In business, we often don’t want to collapse the state. We like the idea that we might be moving fast and being thorough. That our plan is flexible and detailed. That we’re empowering people and holding them accountable.
The problem is, much like in quantum physics, superposition is unstable. It’s only useful for a short while. Eventually, decisions need to be made. Direction needs to be set. And that means observing, which means collapsing the wave function to a single, known state.
This is also why many strategies fail during the execution phase. It’s easy to nod at ideas that sound good in theory. It’s much harder to commit to one path when multiple ones seem viable.
Superposition at the Front Line
Let me take you back to a manufacturing facility I worked in years ago. Management had decided to launch Lean Six Sigma training across the entire workforce. Everyone. Front-line technicians, engineers, office staff, even supervisors who had “seen 12 of these fads already.”
For a few weeks, the business was in a superposition. The initiative was both “a game-changer” and “a waste of time.” No one was sure which.
But here’s what happened: within months, the technicians, the ones many assumed wouldn’t care, started leading their own projects. They saw value in process improvement. They saw tools they could use. Momentum built. Buy-in grew. The organization observed itself, through action, feedback, and results, and the state collapsed.
It became a Lean company. Not because leadership said it would be, but because the people made it real.
What Collapses the Wave Function?
There are four big things that collapse business superpositions:
- Data
Real data. Not the slide deck version. Not the summary someone wrote after three coffee-fueled hours. But actual operational data that forces uncomfortable truths into the light. Observation equals decision. - Time
Eventually, waiting too long forces the state to collapse, usually under pressure. Deadlines, customer churn, or employee burnout will make the choice for you. - Leadership
Strong, grounded leadership, not dictating, but observing with clarity. Leaders who know when to pause, assess, and say, “This is the way.” - Feedback Loops
Constant iterative feedback, like a good PDSA cycle, helps keep possibilities from turning into paralysis. You learn. You act. You adjust. You collapse uncertainty bit by bit.
So, Should We Avoid Superposition?
Not entirely. Superposition isn’t always bad. In fact, it’s part of any creative or strategic process. When you’re brainstorming or innovating, it helps to consider multiple ideas at once. The trick is not to stay there forever.
Use superposition as a temporary state to explore possibilities. But don’t confuse potential with progress. If everything is possible, nothing is done.
A Quick Litmus Test
Not sure if your team is stuck in superposition? Try these:
- Ask three people on your team what the top priority is. If you get three different answers, you’re in it.
- Review a KPI that’s green (or the dreaded yellow). Ask what the story behind it is. If it’s unclear, yep, still there.
- Hold a meeting and watch for head nods. Then ask everyone to write down what was just agreed to. You might be surprised how many realities coexist.
Final Thoughts: The Cat’s Out of the Box
Schrodinger’s Cat is the most famous thought experiment tied to superposition. A cat in a box is both alive and dead, until observed. Business is the same. Your strategy, your execution, your culture, they exist in overlapping possibilities. But until you observe them honestly, with the courage to accept what you see, you don’t really know what’s happening.
So be the observer. Open the box. Ask the questions. Run the data. Talk to the team. Collapse the state.
It might be messy. It might be surprising. But it’ll move you forward. And that’s how you bring clarity in motion.