I am writing this blog dining in Kate Mantilini, a restaurant in LA, a place where I once ate dinner at least a day every week when I was living here. I finished visiting some relative over the weekend and now back in LA.
Whether you are a designer, product manager or CEO, part of your job is to often dealing with making difficult trade-offs between two or more conflicting directions and outcomes whether it is a decision on product features, brand and channel choices or a key diversification strategy.
CEOs have to of pick between conflicting outcomes among long-term or short-term value creation strategies. In fact, the true art is not how best to pick, it is how to embrace such paradoxes to make both things happen simultaneously. It is creating the future and at the same time managing the present.
There’s nothing new about managing opposites, of course. Think about it, it is one of the oldest philosophies of the Taoists of Ancient China and it’s summed up in the symbol of the Yin-Yang. The black and white symbol represents the ancient Chinese understanding of how things work. The outer circle represents "everything", while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two energies, called "yin" (black) and "yang" (white), which cause everything to happen. They are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white, and they cannot exist without each other.
Great business leaders, designers or entrepreneurs generally fall into two major categories: the Missionaries and the Mercenaries. We have seen both in abundance. The missionaries’ mission is to change the world with their ideas and practice the art of possibilities. They are powered by their beliefs and a passion to make a lasting impact, in Steve Jobs’ word “make a dent in the universe”. In doing so, missionaries attract dedicated and fiercely loyal followers; their passion is infectious and elevating. They also tend to be willing to make personal sacrifices (and convince other to do so) for their mission and thus creating organizations commitment.
Mercenaries can follow missionary founders and take the venture forward once the missionary runs out of steam, often by simply executing the missionary's strategies more effectively. For instance, when a board of directors brings in a CEO from the outside for a company, the candidate is more likely to be a mercenary. Many are professional turnaround executives.
Great business leaders are comfortable juggling between both. Steve Jobs is the best archetypal missionary, out to change the world with his vision and go against the big guys. Yet he has learned balance in his business practices, evidencing significant mercenary prowess since his return to Apple. It is the most powerful when the two are combined.
Designers or executives a like must need to lean to deal with opposite goals. Constantly shifting between the balance between exploration and exploitation. Every designers and manager must find his or her place on the continuum between the two opposites and overtime expanding on both sides. Here are some examples:
- Success and Failure: In order for people to succeed, you must first allow them to fail so they fail small and quickly and succeed big.
- Efficiency and Effectiveness: The customer is best served when the organization is efficient; the organization is effective when it puts the customer first.
- Control and Freedom: People need controls to be free. Freedom can only be bought with restraints. Empowering people without losing control and ensure efforts are aligned.
- Change and Stability: To change safely, we need a stable base. To find stability, we need to change ourselves often. Or as Alfred Whitehead put it: "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
