We Have Answers to Questions We Never Asked

Part 1 of a series on narrative inquiry, organisational culture, and conversations for change.

We have answers to questions that we’ve never asked ourselves.
We have answers to questions that we’ve never asked ourselves.

Every time I share that sentence, I say it twice because it is not trivial.

I learned it from Julio Olalla in his work with the Ontology of Language. We operate—individually and collectively—taking a lot for granted, having learned and absorbed a great deal without making the distinction or the choice ourselves.

We operate from a place shaped by both the decisions and choices we have made and those passed down to us. For some of them, we might have had the space and opportunity to reflect on their origins. But others remain transparent to us: we look through them rather than at them. They are answers we received and incorporated without being presented with the originating question.

And because our previous choices influence what we see as possible now, these transparent premises can become the unnoticed backbone of a lot of what we do. When we inquire into why we operate the way we do, we will often reach one of them.

In coaching—the context Olalla is coming from—exploring the judgements and distinctions through which we act can open possibilities for changing our actions and how we interact with the world.

For many, it might seem simplistic to imagine that reinterpreting something can itself be part of change. But imagine someone who has been deciding their whole life from a premise—not a fact, but an interpretation—that was passed down and absorbed without their noticing.

I once worked with a client whose first workplace implicitly treated asking for help as a sign of inefficiency. Eager to prove themselves, they learned not to ask.

Several years later, now in a senior position, that connection between asking for help and being inefficient had not left them. It continued to shape how they organised their work, relationships, and choices—even in a role that could not be held by trying to hold everything tightly and grind through it alone.

This is not to say that reinterpretation alone is the whole of change. It is to recognise that reinterpretation can be part of action. And it requires more than a checklist or framework; it requires context and conversation.

Individual to Collective Premises

For groups and organisations, we can create spaces to inquire into the collective premises shaping how decisions happen in the practical day to day, as people relate to one another and make organisation.

The connection is in the historical choices and distinctions that continue to guide our actions: with Olalla, we are looking at the individual; here, we turn to the collective, to how those premises are carried forward in organisational communication and decision-making.

This does not mean that an organisation is an individual at a larger scale. It means that both perspectives direct attention to historically formed distinctions that shape what becomes available as meaningful action. In one case, we are concerned with a person’s way of observing and acting. In the other, we are concerned with organisational communication: how decisions connect to other decisions, how some contributions become recognisable and others do not, and how practical ways of working become customary.

Some organisational premises are explicitly decided: policies, procedures, roles, reporting lines, budgets, performance measures, or a CEO’s directive. These can be communicated as decisions. People may disagree with them, work around them, or interpret them in unexpected ways, but there is usually a recognisable moment in which the organisation decided them.

Other premises live in more informal communication, in the unsaid ways of “how people do things around here.”

They show up in what people learn to do in practice:

• What counts as a real problem and what is dismissed as noise.
• Who is expected to decide and who is expected to wait.
• When asking for help is responsible and when it signals incompetence.
• Which risks are worth escalating and which should be managed quietly.
• What people can question openly and what is treated as obvious.
• Whether a deviation is recognised as initiative, disruption, or disloyalty.

We often perceive these patterns very well. In fact, we can become highly skilled at navigating them. We quickly learn to use the workarounds as much as the directives.

The question is not simply whether people know how things work. It is whether what people know how to navigate can become something the organisation can communicate about.

What We Can’t Decide or Declare Directly

I came across Jesper Tække’s article, “Luhmann and Organization Culture – A Systems Theoretical Analytical Strategy,” while thinking about this question. (1)

The article develops an analytical strategy based on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of organisational culture. Luhmann looks at organisations as systems that reproduce themselves through decision communication. Decisions establish conditions for subsequent decisions, allowing an organisation to continue organising over time.

Within that account, Tække describes organisational culture through Luhmann’s concept of undecidable decision premises: premises shaped under the influence of organisational decisions but not traceable to a specific decision. As Tække puts it:

“These premises are used because they have always been used.” (1)

Luhmann contrasts these with premises an organisation can formally decide—such as policies, procedures, roles, or directives. Undecidable decision premises still guide decisions, but they are not themselves available for direct decision.

Formal decisions always operate against a backdrop they cannot fully specify. Every time an organization decides what to do, it relies on a vast, quiet reservoir of assumptions about how things are done.

This helps explain why we cannot decide on organisational culture in the same way we can decide on a strategy or a reporting structure. A formal decision can change what is required. It cannot, by itself, determine what will be treated as appropriate, credible, responsible, risky, or worth doing in everyday organisational life.

An organisation can decide that cross-functional collaboration is a priority. It can create a collaboration policy, a new meeting structure, a shared platform, and a performance measure. None of that guarantees that people will experience asking another department for help as legitimate.

They may still understand such a request as intruding on another team’s territory, exposing a lack of competence, creating extra work without recognition, or bypassing an expected hierarchy. Or they may see it as exactly what responsible work requires. The formal decision and the practical meaning of collaboration do not necessarily align.

The same is true in more ordinary moments. A manager can say, “Raise risks early.” Yet someone who has seen colleagues blamed for raising a problem too soon may learn that the safer course is to wait, soften the message, solve it alone, or hope the problem goes away. The directive remains in place. But another premise may be organising what people actually do with it.

Undecidable Premises are not a Barrier or a Problem

It can be tempting to frame taken-for-granted premises as a problem to expose and overcome. Sometimes the work is presented that way: a revealing coaching conversation, a diagnostic intervention, or a framework that will finally uncover the truth.

For a change agent, consultant, or facilitator, that is a siren’s call. It promises a position outside the system, from which culture can be revealed, explained, and repaired. It is worth proceeding more carefully.

Organisations need taken-for-granted premises in order to coordinate action at all. They cannot reconsider every possible interpretation, responsibility, relationship, and action every time someone makes a decision. Much of organisational life depends on people being able to act with a sense of what is relevant, expected, legitimate, and possible.

There are many layers of such premises, and we depend on them heavily. The aim is not to reveal or eliminate all taken-for-granted premises. The question is whether particular premises, under current conditions, are enabling worthwhile coordination while also narrowing what the organisation can notice, discuss, and do.

A premise that once helped a team operate effectively may become limiting when the work changes. A distinction that helped protect quality may later make adaptation difficult. An expectation that helped people manage risk may become a reason not to raise concerns. A familiar way of dividing responsibility may make sense until it prevents people from responding to a problem that crosses those boundaries.

Tække emphasises that culture cannot simply be introduced or changed through decision in the way other organisational elements can. Questions that challenge established habits and assumptions can be met as provocation, humour, or a failure to understand how things work. (1)

That is not necessarily because people are irrational, resistant to change, or unaware of what is happening. It may be because a question touches something that has been doing important work without being openly available for discussion.

What initially appears as a practical question about process can quickly become a question about competence, loyalty, authority, identity, or belonging.

A Question Before Method

This brings me back to the sentence I learned from Olalla.

We have answers to questions that we have never asked ourselves.

In organisational life, some of those answers are carried forward through what people do, what they expect, what they avoid, and what they treat as obvious. They are present in formal decisions, but not exhausted by them. They are also present in the gaps between what an organisation says and what becomes possible in practice.

If organisational culture cannot simply be changed by deciding, the work is not to declare a new culture and expect it to take hold.

The work may begin more modestly: by making room to notice the questions that have disappeared behind the answers.

If some of the premises guiding organisational life cannot be found in a policy, a values statement, or a strategy document, where might we begin to notice them?

One place is in the accounts people give of ordinary decisions, conflicts, workarounds, and experience. In the next article, I explore what narrative listening can make available for that inquiry.

Reference

(1) Tække, Jesper. “Luhmann and Organization Culture: A Systems Theoretical Analytical Strategy.” Paper presented at the EURAM 2025 Annual Conference, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, June 22–25, 2025.

Sources
https://pure.au.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/430217389/1352_Paper_0327100359.pdf