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The topics in each of these examples represent a substantial body of thought and have been associated with a significant effort to move beyond either-or thinking – movements ranging from Total Quality to Environmentalism. Yet most of the apparent dilemmas that bedevil managers are more prosaic and much more easily addressed. Rather than requiring a social movement, most dilemmas call for relatively straightforward thinking that is readily facilitated through the use of well-executed, simple methods. In this article, we will describe one of these methods and how it was applied successfully in a leading for-profit organization³.

Case Study: Strategic Alignment in an
International Sales Division

The client organization, a well-known manufacturer of consumer electronic systems, is in the midst of a major effort to increase strategic alignment in their international sales division. Two major features of this effort are:

1. Implementing a matrix organization structure with dedicated marketing and operations units supporting four distinct sales channels: This structure is intended to align the entire sales organization to customer demand, with sales channel strategies and initiatives driving all marketing and operational activities.
   
   
2. Redesigning performance management to link all individual goals and measures with sales channel strategies: a simplified performance appraisal form and calendar is intended to encourage greater prioritization of individual employee activities plus greater alignment with strategies, and also allow for changes to goals throughout the year based on business needs.

Each of these features represents a significant departure from current company norms and practices, and the general manager of the sales organization requested an assessment to identify the critical challenges managers were facing while implementing these novel approaches.

Challenges Emerging as Dilemmas

To gather the assessment data, we interviewed 20 managers, representing about one-third of the sales organization’s middle management. We used an unstructured interview, asking two questions: (1) What is your experience of the changes taking place in the sales organization; how do you think they are going? And (2) what are the critical challenges you are experiencing? In our analysis, we used a standard approach for qualitative data, clustering similar statements and allowing the themes to emerge from the data.

Most of the managers’ initial comments were optimistic, recognizing that they were in a “steep learning curve” and had strong support from the general manager to see the changes through. As the interviews progressed, most managers expressed widespread feelings of frustration and confusion, pointing to apparent contradictions in the changes they were leading. In the words of one manager, “there are some mixed messages…it’s like we’re trying to do two different things at once.” As our analysis proceeded, seven themes emerged, each summarizing a perceived dilemma for the managers we interviewed. This suggested an opportunity to help managers deal with their critical challenges by exploring a shift from either-or to both-and thinking.

Learning and Applying Both-And Thinking: A Step-by-Step Approach

In a one-hour work session, we led a group of 40 managers (divided into four small groups) through the following four steps:

At the end of the work session, most of the 40 participants had developed solutions they were eager to implement. In follow-up interviews with a small sample of these managers, we learned that the workshop had actually produced a shift in their thinking, enabling them to work through dilemmas to produce positive results. In our view, the major reasons for this success were that (1) most managers appreciate the value of shifting their thinking and are eager to try practical methods; and (2) the method we used was simple enough to be demonstrated in 10 minutes, leaving managers ample time in a one-hour work session to complete the four-step method working in small peer groups.

Now let’s explore each step in more detail.

Step 1: Frame the dilemma in terms of opposite poles and in managers’ own words. In our work session, we selected four of the seven apparent dilemmas⁴ and asked each manager to choose one dilemma he or she wanted to work on. The group of 40 managers clustered into four small groups based on these choices. Prior to the work session, we had posted four flip charts around the room, each framing a dilemma in terms of its opposite poles plus an interview quote illustrating the dilemma in a manager’s own words. This technique enabled the groups to form very quickly, and for each individual to pick a dilemma he or she would find useful to work on. An example of one of these flip charts appears below.

Step 2: Contrast positive and negative characteristics. In the book Polarity Management, Barry Johnson contends that when faced with a paradox, an individual tends to focus on the positive aspects of one pole and the negative aspects of the other, while ignoring or discounting the reverse. Therefore the second step to shifting from either-or to both-and thinking is to develop positive and negative characteristics for each pole of a dilemma. It is important to move from pole to pole, rather than from positive to negative for the same pole. By moving from pole to pole, the dilemma’s contradictions are polarized, and the recognition of positive features for each pole stimulates creative thinking about ways to achieve the best of both. We used the following example to illustrate this technique for the work session participants:

The numbers in each cell show the sequence to use in developing positive and negative characteristics for the dilemma’s poles. Note that the participants are encouraged to move from one pole to the other, first from a positive to negative view, then from a negative to positive view. We found that the small groups of managers with each group sharing a strong interest in the same topic had no difficulty generating positive and negative characteristics for each apparent dilemma.

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3.  We are indebted to Barry Johnson, who first published the general method for resolving dilemmas that is adapted and described in the present article (Johnson, B. Polarity Management, HRD Press, 1992.) These writings, and others cited at the end of this article, are excellent sources of theory and methodology on “both-and thinking.” The purpose of the present article is to concisely present one simple method that has broad and proven application, in a way that can be readily understood and used by managers and change agents.

4.  To make the one-hour work session manageable, we selected from the original interview data the four dilemmas viewed by respondents as most urgent and that we believed to have relatively straightforward solutions.

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