Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems

About the Authors

Wendy K. Smith

Wendy K. Smith obtained her Ph.D. in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, where she first began investigating paradoxes. Specifically, her work focuses on strategies that leaders and senior teams can employ to effectively respond to opposing and often contradicting challenges.

Currently, she is the Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management and the faculty director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Lerner College of Business and Economics, at the University of Delaware. Smith has earned several awards for her research, including the most cited paper in the past ten years and The Decade Award.

Marianne W. Lewis

Marianne W. Lewis earned an MBA from Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and later obtained her Ph.D. from the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. Her research focuses on the management of paradoxes in organizational change, product development, and career development.

Currently, she is dean and professor of management at the Linder College of Business, at the University of Cincinnati. She previously served as dean of Cass Business School and City University of London, and she was Fulbright scholar. Lewis has been recognized for her research, earning the Paper of the Year Award and The Decade Award.

Sources: “About the Authors” section of the book

Our one-sentence summary

Behind every issue, interwoven opposites make us feel like we need to choose between options or find common ground, but embracing paradoxes and finding the relationships between the alternatives can help us navigate problems more effectively, leading to better and more creative solutions.

Publisher’s Summary

“Life is full of paradoxes. How can we each express our individuality while also being a team player? How do we balance work and life? How can we improve diversity while promoting opportunities for all? How can we manage the core business while innovating for the future?

For many of us, these competing and interwoven demands are a source of conflict. Since our brains love to make either-or choices, we choose one option over the other. We deal with the uncertainty by asserting certainty.

There’s a better way.

In Both/And thinking, Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis help readers cope with multiple, knotted tensions at the same time. Drawing from more than twenty years of pioneering research, they provide tools and lessons for transforming these tensions into opportunities for innovation and personal growth.

Filled with practical advice and fascinating stories—including firsthand tales from IBM, LEGO, and Unilever, as well as from startups, nonprofits, and even an inn at one of the four corners of the world—Both/And Thinking will change the way you approach your most vexing problems.”

Source: Book Jacket

Detailed Summary

Introduction: Why Some Problems Are So Challenging

• From personal issues to collective organizational ones, we all face problems. Few of us understand what’s beneath them or know how best to deal with them. Based on 25 years of research, the authors conclude that such difficulty lies behind the nature of dilemmas (choices among alternatives) that result in tensions.
• The authors define tensions as situations where alternative expectations and demands oppose. Such a term encompasses both dilemmas and their underlying paradoxes.
  • Dilemmas are opposing alternatives, each with a logical solution. It is when weighing the pros and cons of each alternative that we feel stuck.
  • Paradoxes are interdependent, persistent contradictions that stem from dilemmas.
• Tensions lead to a sensation of being pulled in opposite directions, often resulting in discomfort and anxiety. When experiencing tensions, we view dilemmas as options and feel forced to make a choice. But the paradoxes underlying these dilemmas are not just opposing, they are also interdependent.
• The first step to developing both/and thinking is to notice paradoxes. The second step is learning how to navigate them. We tend to evaluate our problems through either/or thinking. While this approach minimizes anxiety short-term, it limits creativity and better solutions to our problems.
• In their research, the authors have found that three main conditions make paradoxes salient: change, scarcity, and plurality (meaning, too many voices, ideas, or insights).
• By embracing creative tensions and paradoxes, the authors argue that we can more purposely and effectively work to address our organizational and interpersonal problems.

Part I – Foundations: The Promise and Perils of Paradox

Chapter 1: Experiencing Tensions

• The three core features of a paradox are contradiction, interdependence, and persistence. Leaders often face opposing yet interwoven tensions, such as the tug between authenticity and transparency, technical skills and emotional intelligence, or learning and performing.
  • g., in the context of product development, Dorothy Leonard found that organizations that build strong core capabilities (technical skills and shared values), often attain results so successful that these become core rigidities that limit innovation. Paradoxically, what once led to success then leads to failure.
• There are four types of paradoxes that emerge at all levels (individual to organizational):

1. Performing: tensions of outcome that answer the question, “Why?” These are demands related to goals or expectations. E.g., “Why should I invest in this initiative?” These tensions can occur when organizations consider corporate social responsibility (CSR), for instance. At the individual level, performing paradoxes emerge when we need to resolve professional and personal demands, for example.
2. Learning: tensions of time that answer the question, “When?” These demands often manifest in decisions about innovation and change. E.g., having to choose between tradition or modernization.
3. Organizing: tensions of processes that answer the question, “How?” These are demands related to structuring our lives or our organization. E.g., “How do I get this done?” These manifest in decisions between spontaneity and planning, risk-taking or avoidance, and control or flexibility.
4. Belonging: tensions of identity that answer the question, “Who?” These are demands related to our roles, values, and personality. Many people face challenges related to competing identities, such as being a good leader vs. being a good parent.

• The Paradox System encompasses the tools the authors have developed, based on their research, to enable both/and thinking. It includes strategies to shift assumptions, adjust our level of comfort when facing paradoxes, tactics to build structures around alternatives, and adaptive practices to navigate tensions.

Chapter 2: Getting Caught in Vicious Cycles

• For the first 60 years following its foundation in 1932, LEGO was a successful organization known for its quality control, strong values, and rigid strategies that kept the conpany prosperous. But, in the 1990s, LEGO faced a dilemma that put them on the verge of failure.
  • The surge of digital and computerized toys challenged LEGO’s position in the marketplace. But LEGO decided not to shift strategies and stick with what they knew had worked for decades.
  • Later, on the verge of collapse, LEGO overcorrected and adopted a strategy that completely contradicted their previous ones. Trying to embrace innovation to the fullest, their strategies ended up not being profitable.
• Either/or thinking is not only limiting but can become detrimental. We tend to overemphasize one of the two alternatives and neglect the other.
• The key to continual progress is to start innovating while we are still on an upward trajectory of success. But there are challenges to it. We don’t always know when we’re at that point, and that’s usually when we least think about making any radical changes. The key is believing that you’re always at that point so that you constantly seek new opportunities for improvement.
• The main dilemma that accompanies either/or thinking is the decision between intensifying current efforts or disrupting the status quo. But either way, the consequences lead us to vicious cycles. In their research, the authors have identified three forms of vicious cycles:

1. Rabbit Holes – Intensification: This cycle forms when we respond to a given dilemma in a way that ended up benefiting us previously, and continue to use the same strategy. As we get better and more comfortable with it, it becomes habitual and leads to intensification. Then, we advance deeper into this rabbit hole through:
   1. Cognitive Traps: Assumptions frame our problems, influencing our responses. This is how self-fulfilling prophecies tend to occur – we choose the evidence that supports our mindset and fail to see that which challenges it.
   2. Emotional Traps: When in a dilemma, our natural reactions will be to reduce discomfort through avoidance or rejection of tensions. But we will eventually need to decide. To protect ourselves, we overemphasize our favored side of the tension, reinforcing routines and over-relying on existing skills.
   3. Behavioral Traps: We tend to stick with existing routines rather than creating new ones. When habits are too rigid and automatic, they can backfire.
2. Wrecking Balls – Overcorrection: In our effort to break from either/or thinking, we can overcorrect and go too far in the opposite direction, resulting in a bigger challenge.
3. Trench Warfare – Polarization: The previous cycles occur when we choose one alternative over another. But another form arises when people fall to opposing sides of a paradox. As teams begin to form and groups feel challenged, polarization intensifies. With more enmity comes more defensiveness and less work to find a solution.

• To avoid vicious cycles, the authors suggest a better way to embrace both/and thinking and engage in competing demands simultaneously. E.g., It was through a “bifocal perspective” that Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, LEGO’s new CEO, made the company a renowned and bold innovator that didn’t neglect quality and financial control.

Part II – Approaches: The Paradox System

Chapter 3: Enabling Virtuous Cycles with the Paradox System

• The authors suggest two main patterns to engage in both/and thinking and navigate paradoxes that enable virtuous cycles.

1. Mules – Finding Creative Integration: Humans breed mules because they inherit the best qualities of horses and donkeys. In this context, finding a mule refers to identifying a synergy where the opposite sides of a paradox become integrated.
   • To encourage creative integration instead of looking at a problem as oppositional, we should frame it as interrelated. E.g., two women sitting next to each other at a library face an issue: one wants the window open, and the other doesn’t. In a dominating solution, only one person wins. Yet, in a compromising solution (such as opening the window halfway), both sides give something up. Creative integration allows for a third option. When walking through the problem, the women realized the core issues: one wanted airflow, and the other didn’t want her papers to blow away. In asking how they could ensure both got what they wanted, they opened a window in an adjacent room. With this solution, no one gave up anything.
   • Integrative thinking is key to successful leadership as it allows people to recognize the value of complex, multidirectional, and nonlinear relationships. In seeking to accommodate paradoxes, new opportunities can arise.
   • This strategy’s drawback is that, usually, creative integrations are temporary responses and often fail to find more permanent solutions. And finding creative solutions isn’t always easy.
2. Tightrope Walkers – Enabling Consistent Inconsistencies: A tightrope walker advances not by remaining in perfect equilibrium but through dynamic balance: subtly and consistently shifting left and right. Navigating paradoxes requires us to learn to make continual micro-shifts between options to continue to move forward.
   • Instead of either/or choices, we move back and forth between poles, accommodating alternatives and creating a pattern over time. To address a dilemma related to work-life balance, we could choose to stay late one night but make the opposite decision the next time.
   • Tightrope walkers are consistently inconsistent to not reinforce vicious cycles.

• To successfully engage in these two strategies, we must learn to engage in both/and thinking. Based on their research, the authors suggest four main tools in the paradox system support this mindset: The ABCD (covered more in-depth in Ch. 4 – 7) are.

1. (A) Assumptions: Change how we frame problems, and instead of choosing options, seek to accommodate both alternatives.
2. (B) Boundaries: Build structures around us that support our mindset, behaviors, and emotions. Boundaries help keep us from falling.
3. (C) Comfort: Honor our initial discomfort with paradoxes so that we can later become more comfortable with the discomfort.
4. (D) Dynamism: Learn and change by shifting through competing demands.

Chapter 4: Shifting to Both/And Assumptions

• People experience tensions to different extents and through different mindsets. Some are more comfortable dealing with paradoxes than others (experiencing high vs. low tensions), and some are more dichotomous in their views of issues (either/or vs. both/and mindsets). These differences lead to four different thinking zones:

1. Avoiding zone: In this zone, we experience low tensions but with an either/or mindset. While blissful ignorance can be valuable, sometimes we can’t ignore recurring questions or postpone decisions.
2. Resolving zone: When forced to act, we move into this zone and experience uncertainty and discomfort from making either/or decisions. While some relief might happen upon choosing an alternative, these decisions can be limited if not detrimental.
3. Anticipating zone: In this zone, we experience few tensions, even if we draw on a paradoxical mindset. This zone is a low-stress situation, but it helps uncover tensions we would not have otherwise noticed.
4. Engaging zone: In noticing tensions, we move to the engaging zone, where we experience them, but through the paradox mindset, can also generate creative and sustainable solutions.
   • It is worth noting that when tensions are low, we perform better with an either/or thinking approach.

• Within the paradox system, the authors identified three tools to build a paradox mindset:

1. Accepting knowledge as containing multiple truths. The parable of the blind people and the elephant helps explain this tool. When a group of blind people all placed their hands on a different part of an elephant, each person’s description of what they felt differed significantly. Each was sure they were right and was confident that the others were wrong. They assumed their own experience reflected the whole situation.
   • Confirmation bias is a tendency to assess an environment with limited information and identify only that which is relevant to us.
   • In a paradox mindset, we start by assuming that different viewpoints can all simultaneously be the truth. To foster this mindset, we need to start saying “yes/and” whenever someone asserts something different from what we assumed. “Yes” is accepting the idea, “and” is building on it.
2. Framing resources as abundant. This strategy involves shifting the scarcity assumption to abundance. When resources are scarce, we need to compete for them. E.g., issues associated with allocating tasks within a day are a time allotment competition. The usual approach is to find effective ways to allocate resources, but this is a dichotomous view.

• A paradox challenges this zero-sum approach and focuses on expanding the value of the resource. E.g., instead of thinking about how to spend more of the available time on one activity over another, think about how all hours are not equally productive (as with early risers or night owls). It’s not just about how many hours you spend on each activity but about when and in which order.
• Thinking about resources as abundant has allowed for new ideas where we do more from less. E.g., Ecobricks built out of plastic bottles.

3. Approaching problem-solving as coping. This tool is a shift from controlling to managing. When confronted with paradoxes, we feel anxiety and fear. Control helps us reduce uncertainty but prompts us to decide among alternatives. With a paradox mindset, we instead cope – we accept the uncertainty, honor ambiguity, and move forward. Rather than solving persistent paradoxes, we constantly solve smaller problems, leveraging the paradox. I.e., we adapt and learn.

Chapter 5: Creating Boundaries to Contain Tensions

• IBM created a market that later destroyed them. When competitors emerged, leaders were unconcerned. Married in their ways, they failed to adopt innovation and started to lose ground. In 1993, IBM hired Lou Gerstner, who embraced emerging opportunities, including the Internet, while maintaining the company’s existing business.
  • The company had three main areas of focus: products that were already in the market, innovations that could enter the market in the short-term, and innovations focused on the distant future.
  • Janet Perna, the general manager of the Data Management Division, was tasked with revamping her unit, and she felt the tug between exploring new opportunities and exploiting old certainties. She was able to succeed by creating boundaries.
• Building boundaries is key to structuring and sustaining our mindset, emotions, and behaviors. Some tools include goal-setting, routines, organizational structures and roles, allocating time, and selecting a specific physical environment.
• The authors identify the following strategies to create boundaries:

1. Linking to a higher purpose. Having an overarching reason for doing what we do:
   1. Helps us persist amid challenges. Both/and thinking requires emotional and cognitive engagement. Having a purpose helps provide the reasons and the motivational boost we need to engage in paradoxes.
   2. Allows us to unite opposing forces. When facing competing demands, a higher purpose can help unify an organization’s goals and have people collaborate and work together, minimizing conflict.
   3. Provides a long-term focus for short-term decisions. It also helps avoid either/or decisions, as these are usually the result of myopic vision.
2. Separating and connecting competing demands. To separate and connect opposing poles, organizations can create boundaries such as leadership roles, goals, metrics, rewards, relationships, etc., and leadership makes the connections.

• On an individual level, setting boundaries such as changing a physical space or even changing clothes can help you set apart work from personal life.
• A false dichotomy (having opposite poles and neglecting their integration) can be as dangerous as a false synergy (a veiled attempt to unify that fails to address the underlying poles in a paradox).

3. Building guardrails to avoid going too far. Guardrails are barriers that keep us from overemphasizing one pole. They also create constraints that foster creativity and innovation. “By scoping out the playing field, we bring competing demands together. This juxtaposition forces us to find more mules – more creative integrations” (p. 147).

Chapter 6: Finding Comfort in the Discomfort

• Our emotions can help us navigate paradoxes if we make them an enabling resource instead of an obstacle.
• Repression, regression, projection, reaction formation, and denial are the five defensive mechanisms we use to deal with uncertainty (and life events characterized by change).
• It is common to rely on either/or thinking when we feel threatened. In such a case, we minimize uncertainty but risk triggering defensive mechanisms that make us spiral into vicious cycles as we feel anxiety, frustration, or anger. The key to avoiding this effect is not expecting that paradoxes won’t trigger uncertainty but learning to find comfort in the discomfort. To do so,

1. Build in a pause. Pause refers to a space or moment between the stimulus and the response (a mental or physical break). It can be taking a deep breath or stepping away from the triggering moment. The goal is to let yourself process the situation so that your reaction is thought-out rather than an impulsive or automatic emotional response.
2. Accept the discomfort. Often, denying or ignoring uncomfortable emotions makes them come back stronger (this is called the rebound effect). To manage negative emotions, accept and honor them.
3. Broaden your perspective. Positive emotions help us be more open to new information and allow us to become better at integrating ideas. To tap into our positive emotions, we should learn to identify when our negative emotions take control. Then, find activities that trigger positive emotions (e.g., gratitude lists, socializing, exercising).

• Research suggests that emotional ambivalence (connecting with positive and negative emotions at the same time) can be beneficial, particularly for leadership and negotiation.

Chapter 7: Enabling Dynamics that Unleash Tensions

• When Terri Kelly became the fourth CEO of W.L. Gore & Associates, she faced competing demands. As the company grew, new challenges emerged related to integrating a big enterprise now playing in the global market. Yet making too many changes felt like dishonoring the identity that had propelled the company in the first place, along with Bill Gore’s legacy, especially with her being only the second CEO from outside the Gore family. To succeed, she slowly transformed the company so that people could think globally but act locally.
• Enabling dynamism refers to actions that spur learning and adaptation, and encourage continual shifts among competing demands. It means being open to new information, tolerant of ambiguity, and willing to rethink decisions when necessary. Tools that enable dynamism include:

1. Experimenting using measured steps. Conducting experiments allows us to test ideas and evaluate strategies. Rapid prototyping allows us to shift tactics often through a low-cost approach. David Kelley, CEO of IDEO, encouraged this form of experimentation among his designers to have them try several ideas and avoid them getting stuck in forcing one to work.

• Experimenting also allows us to notice new synergies that we wouldn’t have otherwise uncovered. E.g., the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity was developed to help new faculty adapt to their new roles. As the company grew, it decided to target graduate students. The program was expensive, and universities tend not to invest in students as much as they do faculty. To address the issue, the Center created a lower-cost service that became particularly successful for students andfaculty who couldn’t afford the program.

2. Preparing for serendipity. Serendipity refers to finding something valuable when you are not looking. Examples include Post-It Notes, Velcro, penicillin, and Cristopher Columbus’s journey to America. It’s about purposely putting yourself in conditions that will trigger serendipity and having the mindset that will allow you to recognize it. To do so, create space for debate, diminish power dynamics, allow for input across ranks, cultivate agility, explore, and be willing to test opportunities.
3. Learning to unlearn. Unlearning refers to finding ways to let go of old mental models, making space for new ones. One of the best tools to unlearn is double-loop learning. Single-loop learning is when we decide and get feedback to improve future decisions. Double-loop learning refers to questioning embedded assumptions, models, or rules that influenced our decisions in the first place.

Part III – Applications: Both/And Thinking in Practice

Chapter 8: Individual Decisions

• To apply both/and thinking and the paradox system to personal decision-making, the authors recommend a step-by-step approach. They rely on a made-up character, Ella, and a fake scenario to exemplify the process.

1. Define the Dilemma: Describe your problem, noting the tug-of-war between the alternative options.

• g., Ella had spent years struggling to find the right place to work. She finally found a job that she loved leading a campaign design for a hospital, but was then offered a new and potentially better position at another company.

2. Surface the Underlaying Paradox: Consider the contradictory yet interdependent tensions. Identify the alternatives and analyze what assumptions and mindsets are guiding your viewpoints.

• g., Ella’s dilemma is a tension between stability and change. Specifically, she identified the alternatives of staying vs. going, stability vs. change, loyalty vs. opportunity, and performing well vs. learning new things.

3. Reframe the Problem to a Both/And Question: While our natural reaction is to view alternatives as mutually exclusive, we should focus on the interdependency between the tensions. Reframe your problem by asking, “How can I engage in both A and B?” rather than, “Should I choose A or B?”.

• g., Ella’s question was, “How can I stay at my job and accept the new job?” Obviously, Ella cannot have two-full time jobs, but this form of questioning leads to creative thinking.

4. Analyze the Data (Separate and Connect): Examine the upsides and downsides of each alternative but go beyond and find points of connection between them. Consider Ellen Langer’s strategy of moving up a level (connecting the options to an overarching vision) and moving down a level (finding what’s at stake for each option).

• g., Ella separated the demands by noticing that she could finish the project she was working on or engage in new and potentially more promising opportunities. She could work with her dream team or move into a leadership position.
• The overarching vision that led to synergies was her desire for an impactful career. She asked herself, “How can completing the current campaign impact the new campaign? How could her current team inform the work with her new team?”

5. Consider the Outcome: You can rely on the two patterns of choosing covered in Ch. 3: Mules – creative integration and Tightrope Walkers – consistent inconsistency.

• g., Ella came up with a few solutions through the Mule strategy: take the new job and bring some of her team members with her, or use the new job offer to negotiate a more senior role in her current organization.
• Ella also considered the Tightrope Walker approach: she could negotiate with her new job to delay her start day to ensure success in her current campaign, or she could work as a consultant for a time while she trained a someone to take over for her.

Chapter 9: Interpersonal Relationships

• Paradoxes can result in interpersonal conflicts. E.g., organizations can experience tension between managers and employees. Yet the paradox system can help navigate interpersonal conflict. To demonstrate how to do so, the authors rely on a model developed by Barry Johnson and his team at Polarity Partnerships: The SMALL model (S) seeing, (M) mapping, (A) assessing, (L) learning, and (L) leveraging polarities.

1. Seeing the Polarities. The first step is recognizing paradoxes. Whenever you face a conflict, take the time to identify and label each pole in positive or neutral terms. This tactic helps you to start shifting assumptions and move away from either/or thinking.
   • If you have difficulty finding the poles, describe your ideal and the current reality. Paradoxes lie in the differences between where you’re coming from and where you’re going.
2. Mapping the Polarities. This step helps us separate and connect the poles. In interpersonal relationships, mapping polarities requires us to listen to and honor potential truths that might not match our own. We also need to manage our emotions. At this point, it is always a good idea to go back to the relationship or organization’s greater purpose. Then dive into each pole, assessing the upsides and downsides. You might notice that new tensions also arise.
3. Assessing the Polarities. Perform this assessment thinking about your current situation; that is, define the degree to which your reality values the upsides and displays the downsides of each pole.
4. Learning the Polarities. At this stage, our natural tendency will be to focus on the upsides of one pole and minimize the downsides of the other, triggering a pendulum swing that may lead to a vicious cycle (e.g., LEGO adopting innovation radically after leaders refused to adapt to new technology – both instances risking failure). To effectively navigate paradoxes, value the upsides and minimize the downsides of both
5. Leveraging the Polarities. The final step is focusing on the upsides of both poles in a paradox so that you can begin to point out and honor the synergies among them. Think about the strategies that you can employ to increase the upsides of both poles. Think too about early indicators that you’re moving too far towards one side or the other. Set boundaries and guardrails to help you. 

Chapter 10: Organizational Leadership

• Three paradoxes all leaders need to learn to navigate are “being a globally minded localist, a humble hero, and a tech-savvy humanist” (p. 234).
• To effectively manage paradoxes, leaders should draw on tools that help create integrated systems to address cognitive assumptions and emotional comfort to both build static boundaries and release dynamism.
• Not only is navigating paradoxes paradoxical, but the tools to navigate them are paradoxical too. While it is complicated, the authors argue that leaders from startups to Fortune 500 companies succeed in adopting the paradox system.
• Relying on The Unilever Turnaround anecdote, the authors showcase actions that leaders can rely on to create an organizational environment that successfully navigates paradoxes:

1. Link organizations to a higher purpose. Constantly reminding employees about the company’s higher purpose will minimize conflict and help move beyond it to adopt a more holistic approach that accommodates competing demands.
2. Build guardrails around paradoxical poles. Set clear roles and establish goals so those standing by each opposing pole are properly represented and moving forward. Setting guardrails in an organization can also involve people, processes, and practices. The ultimate goal is to keep the organization from going too deep in one direction.
3. Diversify stakeholders. While distinct perspectives can lead to conflict, it also ensures the representation of opposing poles. It’s a good idea to have different voices, but make sure it is in the spirit of fostering creative integration.
4. Encourage experimentation so that new possibilities emerge, and the organization can learn and unlearn accordingly.
5. Surface underlying paradoxes. Purposely name and label tensions, using specific language to describe the paradoxical nature behind them.
6. Honor the discomfort. Create an environment that fosters vulnerability, where people slowly become comfortable with the uncertainty or conflict.
7. Build skills for managing conflict. Model conflict-building skills and teach leaders to manage conflict.
8. Personalize paradoxes for employees. Connect the competing demands with the organizational teams’ goals, fostering paradoxical mindsets. 

Appendix: Paradox Mindset Inventory

• The authors include a paradox mindset inventory that assesses your approach to managing competing demands, such as solving problems creatively but in a timely manner, planning while being flexible, learning new skills while taking advantage of existing processes, performing your best while helping others, and similar paradoxes.