One of the major financial institutions in the United States had a growing concern regarding the rise in employee turnover and wrongful termination lawsuits. They attributed their turnover problem with employee dissatisfaction with the corporate culture, often referring to the culture as ‘culture wars.’

OSI used the 7-BA grid to help find out what was going on. The conclusion was that employee turnover and patterns of lawsuits were symptoms of seven recurrent ambiguities within organizations. One of the business ambiguities involved indefinite links to cause and effect. Yet, many people were improperly fired (wrongful lawsuits) because they could not solve the problem (a problem that no one knew the cause of). Once the company’s leadership knew that they were dealing with an ambiguity, it changed their thinking, approach to solutions, and how they treated those who were trying to solve it.