Stuck in the Middle? How Embracing Both-And Thinking Drives Results with Wendy Smith

[00:00:00] Wendy: So if we can notice, oh gosh, I have to live in city A or city B. Do we have a child or do we not have a child? Work or life, leading or learning or performing. I mean, all these tensions that you’ve just noticed here, if people think of any of the challenges that they face, naming the competing demands and then reframing the question invites us into a whole different way of thinking.

[00:00:22] Katie: Welcome to Chain of Learning, where the links of leadership and learning unite. This is your connection for actionable strategies and practices to empower you to build a people centered learning culture, get results, and expand your impact so that you and your team can leave a lasting legacy. I’m your host and fellow learning enthusiast, Katie Anderson.

[00:00:42] Deliver short term results or take a long term view. Be the expert or be a coach. Focus on business outcomes or people development. Manage the core business or innovate for the future. The security of the current state or the possibilities that come with change. What’s more important, technical skills or emotional social skills?

[00:01:03] How do I balance work and life? These are many of the paradoxical tradeoffs that I hear every week from you and in my interactions with leaders and organizations around the world. For most of us, these competing and interwoven demands are a source of conflict. We jump to thinking there are two distinct options that we have to choose between.

[00:01:22] We deal with the uncertainty by asserting certainty. But there is a better way to explain how we can embrace a different approach. I invited Wendy Smith to the podcast. Wendy’s the coauthor of both and thinking embracing creative tensions to solve your toughest problems, as well as an award winning psychologist and professor at the Lerner college of business and economics at the university of Delaware.

[00:01:45] She spent her career studying paradoxes and leadership and is on a mission to help individuals and organizations. Turn problems into possibilities. We started off our conversation with a question by advocating that we reframe choices from an either or to a both and mindset is Wendy saying that we really can have it all.

[00:02:06] Let’s dive in.

[00:02:07] Wendy: Yeah, Katie. No. Well, it’s a great way to start off and it’s great to be here with you. And one of the misconceptions of both and is that both and means and, and we just expand, expand, expand with no boundaries. And that becomes problematic because what ends up happening is that people burn out and feel exhausted.

[00:02:25] Both and is a way to rethink our challenges, rethink our dilemmas, an approach to leadership that allows for more creativity, more expansion, but it’s not an approach that leads us to burnout. And. The more that I speak about this, the more that I am super clear it’s not and and.

[00:02:44] Katie: So what’s the difference between and and and both and?

[00:02:47] Wendy: Well, I think, just let’s dive into both and for a minute so that we can unpack that idea, and then we can go back to why it’s not and and. The place to start is for people to think about the things that they are grappling with in their world today. Uh, what are the things that we are struggling with that we want to do better in our leadership, in our teams, in our work?

[00:03:09] What are the things that we are struggling with in our lives, in our parenting, in our partnering, in our relationships? And where are the tensions coming up? And if we look at any of those tensions, those tensions tend to come to us as Either ors. Do we do a or B? Am I focused on work or life? Am I focused on quality or cost?

[00:03:27] Am I focused on making sure that I’m going to innovate and change and be the innovative person for tomorrow and change oriented? Or am I focused on making sure that I am performing effectively for today? Both and invites us to notice how often we frame those as either ors and realize that we are missing out on something bigger, which is that underlying those either ors are not only these competing demands, but also how they are intertwined.

[00:03:55] And if we reframe them into how can I accommodate, how can I both, Be a really effective employee, develop my career and have a really robust family. What does that mean? What does that take? What does it mean to have both quality and be cost oriented? That’s when we get some more creative answers.

[00:04:14] Katie: I love that.

[00:04:14] I tend to think about it’s not necessarily like a perfect balance at any one time. You know, someone said, how, how do you balance having, being a career professional with your own business and having two kids at home? And I said, well, I’m not, it’s. It’s no one day is perfectly equal, but over the course of the month or the year, I try and be balanced on how I’m showing up and making sure that I’m putting the time to where I want to be.

[00:04:38] So it’s not like every moment is balanced, but it’s like that totality is allowing me to have both of those spaces.

[00:04:44] Wendy: Yes. We invite us to think about both hands. So the first study I ever did was at IBM and I was looking at how they were navigating the tension between who they were for today and their existing customers and also changing for tomorrow.

[00:04:58] Some of them were really focused on, what do we do today? Some of them were really focused on, how do we change for tomorrow? There were a few that were saying, wait, in order for us to be effective, we’ve got to keep doing what we do today and innovate for tomorrow. I expected that that meant that they would find all of these, what we call creative integrations.

[00:05:19] It’s like ideal things where their innovation would let them be more effective today, or their Competencies of today would let that. And we, we talk about that as, as a creative integration, this ultimate both, and as a mule, we use the metaphor of the mule because it’s this bringing together of the donkey and the horse, you get the better mule.

[00:05:38] And that’s not what happened. What happened at IBM was more of what you are talking about, which we call. Tight rope walking or being consistently inconsistent, which is over time. I’m committed to these different things, but I’m constantly in this balancing stage like the tight rope walker.

[00:05:55] Katie: I really liked that analogy when I was reading your book and how it’s like we have to make those micro adjustments.

[00:06:01] And sometimes it’s like we’re almost standing on one leg more than the other, maybe not how a tight rope walker would do it, but it’s, it’s how do we over time create the right balance for our lives? And, and that’s different for different people too, based on, you know, what’s right. for them or in the moment.

[00:06:16] One of the things I talk with a lot of leaders about who are trying to create this culture of where everyone’s a problem solver and engaged at all levels, but they have, they themselves as either the change leader or the operational leader have a lot of experience and expertise and talk about, it’s not necessarily.

[00:06:31] A trade off between are you an expert or are you more of a coach? You can be both. And actually it’s like this continuum of leadership. It’s just about being intentional about what’s the right way to be showing up in that moment. How is that aligned with like the outcome you want, the impact you want.

[00:06:49] And so you can actually be both like an expert and a coach. Uh, It’s just like, which is the right way, you know, I’m sort of doing a tight rope walking with my hands, like, so that the microbalance, so that you’re showing up in the way that’s going to be most effective. And it sounds like that’s what you were talking about at IBM too.

[00:07:03] How do you have that long term thinking, uh, for the innovation, but also addressing the business needs that need to happen today as well.

[00:07:11] Wendy: And here is the, you know, extension on that. Yes. And that if you think about the, the question of how we show up as a leader. So am I in the. Moment as the expert being able to contribute.

[00:07:22] Am I overarching looking out and, you know, being the coach and inviting others in the key there is not just that you can shift between the two. It’s then asking the next level, deeper question, which is how does being able to do both of these, inform one another? How is it that your own expertise actually makes you a better coach to look up and across all of these things?

[00:07:43] How is it that taking the broader vision and, and bigger picture and being able to bring everybody together actually enables you to dive deep into your, into your expertise? What’s the integration between them? There’s the magic of both. And

[00:07:57] Katie: I love that. If that one step further, it’s not that this or that in any one moment, but how do they actually compliment and make you even better in both ways?

[00:08:06] And

[00:08:06] Wendy: I think that what you’re pointing to is, you know, when we coach people, coach leaders, and they’re dealing with a dilemma, we invite them into a sort of three step process. And you’ve kind of unpacked every one of them in what you just said, which is that number one, name the dilemma. And acknowledge these competing demands.

[00:08:23] So if the dilemma is, how do I lead? And am I in the weeds with my expertise? Am I looking beyond in my coaching? Like name that acknowledge that you are framing it as an either or, and then num, and then first step, change the question you ask. How can you accommodate both and then pull them apart? What is valuable, unique?

[00:08:42] Under what conditions is it important to be the coach? Under what conditions is it important to be the leader? Pull them apart. We talk about a separating and then seek and look for the points of connection. How do they reinforce one another? How can you accommodate both in service of moving into not just, am I going to make a choice between which one of these is my leadership?

[00:09:01] Am I going to, but how do I continually choose dynamically? where I’m going to lean into. Figure out the dilemma, reframe it, pull it apart, bring it together, and then think about it as an ongoing choosing. I’m going to figure out what I need for the moment, but I’m going to be living into that shifting dynamic.

[00:09:19] Katie: And it sounds like too, it’s pulling out the, the real. The essence of what the each parts are so that you can integrate that. Maybe it’s not like how you envisioned it manifesting in the beginning. And that was maybe setting up that polarization of the paradoxical choice. But, but really when you, when you can strip it down and reframe it in a different way, you can see that there are elements that actually can be integrated or complimented.

[00:09:41] Wendy: Yeah, and reinforcing each other for sure.

[00:09:43] Katie: So this is really helpful. This is a both and thinking and how we can leverage it in our, you know, our lives and at work, let’s go back to what we were talking about of the and, and, and, and how both and differs from and, and.

[00:09:55] Wendy: Yeah, a couple of weeks ago I was keynoting at a women’s conference.

[00:09:59] I think the and, and is a particularly pernicious problem for women who don’t want to have boundaries and say no. And. Both and is about partially having boundaries. So, you know, here’s an example. I was talking to a leader the other day who was committed to a group of people really wanting to get stuff done, committed to a project.

[00:10:20] And it was actually a project that was sort of an off the side of the desk project. And it was a great project. And in that conversation, what became really clear was that this off the side of the desk project was preventing this leader from being able to do the main. Demanding things that would allow her to be able to push forward on the revenue generating PNL oriented main part of her job.

[00:10:42] And ultimately what it was doing was it was killing her main job. And so the question was, okay, well, what are you trying to accomplish? Well, what she was trying to accomplish was to be an effective leader with her PNL, but also creating the conditions in which she was very inclusive of other people.

[00:10:58] Okay. Well, how do you enable your PNL and your inclusion In a way that allows you to be able to go forward and be successful. And what she realized was that the off the side of the desk piece, while it seemed like it was inclusive and helpful was actually killing her potential to be effective and successful going forward and had to have some boundaries around that, well, that’s moving from both and, or, and, and to both end.

[00:11:22] And so what she ended up doing was rethinking how she showed up as a leader with her people in terms of the P and L work that she was doing. And in terms of the main. business line of business work that she was doing that was more inclusive that didn’t require to do this off the side of the desk, like diversity group work that she was being asked to do.

[00:11:41] That changed the, you know, that, that shifted it. Okay. That’s a both end approach rather than an end to end approach.

[00:11:46] Katie: Sometimes it seems that like there are mutually exclusive. Choices though, you know, like, are you going to live in city a or city B or are, you know, I hear this, this is a more of a personal example, but as someone like want children and their spouse doesn’t want children, how do you, how do you help people approach those seemingly truly paradoxical choices?

[00:12:08] Wendy: Yeah. So the invitation there is to start with what’s the dilemma, right? So again, it’s going to go back to this process of what’s the dilemma and certainly you’re not going to, and, and one of the reasons we face dilemmas, I just want to name them is because we have limited resources. And so often those resources are at stake.

[00:12:24] We have limited, you know, so it’s time and space. We can’t live in the same city at the same time we can’t, right. And so, you know, it feels like it’s an either or choice because we have to choose between these things that really, like you said, feel mutually exclusive. The invitation is to start with pulling these things apart and understanding what’s at stake for each one.

[00:12:42] What is at stake for living in city A versus city B? City A might be that you’re closer to family, that you are closer to geographically things that you want. City B might be more adventurous or more enabling. Okay. So then instead of asking, do I live in city A or city B? One question could be, how can I Accommodate a life in which I am close to family, but at the same time have adventure.

[00:13:06] Well that might open up all kinds of new possibilities. It’s not just about where you live, but about how you engage with your life.

[00:13:13] Katie: I really appreciate that example because it shows how the reframing of the problem you’re trying to solve is so powerful. And we can think about that in so many different applications as we, we kind of tend to.

[00:13:25] We’re jumping to like, what are the solution options rather than what’s the actual problem we’re trying to address? So maybe it really is. What’s the lifestyle I want to be living, uh, rather than is it city A or city B? And that, that’s a whole, that opens up in so much, and we can apply that and you know, operational organizational work as well.

[00:13:44] So going back to what are, what are we not seeing as the potential solutions, but how are we going back to what is the. What’s the challenge we’re really trying to address?

[00:13:53] Wendy: Yeah, I mean, I’ll give you a work example that has come up pretty significantly in companies as I’m doing this work, and it’s the example of, um, hybrid work, right?

[00:14:02] We’re coming back from the pandemic. Do people work from home or do they work from the office? And companies are making really bold but like universal decisions about this without being really thoughtful. What are we trying to accomplish? Right? So. So. if we do the same process, instead of asking work from home or work from the office where people are like, okay, three days here, two days there.

[00:14:23] Well, that’s not accomplishing anything. Okay. All these people work from home. All these people work from like, what are we really trying to accomplish when it comes to work from home? We want to give people autonomy. We want to give them more flexibility. We want to accommodate people’s needs so they don’t burn out.

[00:14:36] What are we trying to accomplish about work from the office? We’re trying to get people to be more collaborative and connected and to build relationships. Okay, well, instead of just asking work from home and work from the office, how about we ask, what is it, what does it take to enable us to give people the autonomy and the flexibility and minimize burnout in our business while simultaneously ensuring connections and collaboration?

[00:14:58] And maybe that means not just come to the office, everybody, but when we all come to the office, we’re really thoughtful that we’re all having a. all team meeting. Or maybe it’s not just work from home. It’s give people more flexibility on hours or give people the potential to work from home. But then we are ensuring that when they do, we know when they’re available or when they’re not.

[00:15:16] It’s different ways of being more thoughtful about trying to accommodate or accomplish what’s at stake in each of these areas. Outcomes.

[00:15:23] Katie: And what are you seeing? That’s the risk when leaders aren’t able to shift from this either or to this both and type of thinking. I

[00:15:33] Wendy: mean, we talk about three different patterns of risk.

[00:15:37] So the first pattern is when we pick a side, we get really stuck in it. And then the world changes around us and we can’t change. And we talk about that as the rabbit hole. And this is the classic problem of, you know, existing companies getting stuck in the way that they do things and not being able to make the change to the future.

[00:15:54] We see this with individuals too. We get stuck in who we are and our beliefs about ourselves and our identities. And we can’t, you know, our, our competencies. It’s really hard for us to change when the world changes around us. So that stuckness is one of the big risks. Our second huge risk is that when we change, we overcorrect and we sort of shift to the other opposite side.

[00:16:15] You know, this happens in companies. We’re going to be so team oriented, team oriented, team oriented. Everything’s about teams, but then nobody’s getting any work done. So then we shift. Okay. Everybody’s doing things on their own and we sort of make these big moves, but the most Pernicious, the most problematic that we see when we get stuck in either or thinking is that is when we’re in relationships when I pick a side of something and, you know, I have a choice and I pick a side and I assume that I am right.

[00:16:43] I therefore assume that anybody who picks the other side is wrong. And we get into the us, them polarizing, fighting conflicts without doing the deep, like, let’s really unpack, listen, respect, value, understand to come to a better decision. And we call that trench warfare because you could just imagine the idea that we have a point of view.

[00:17:08] We sort of dig a trench. We surround ourselves by people that agree with us. It’s the us versus the them over there that we don’t even know who the they are. Like if, if folks listening to this, just as one piece, notice and hear how often we say they, and we don’t really understand what they are about, whether the day is, you know, Somebody who disagrees with us or the day is someone in our company that like they, the, the finance people, they, the R and D people, um, without really understanding, then we’re losing out on all kinds of potential creativity.

[00:17:42] And we’re creating conflict where detrimental conflict where it doesn’t need

[00:17:45] Katie: to be. What you’re saying resonates with a quote that I pulled out from your book that really stood out to me in the beginning about We have to honor the complexity of our world by understanding, appreciating, and embracing the opposing forces.

[00:18:00] And you and your coauthor were talking about, you know, actual politics and how political leaders like Barack Obama and John McCain were, were handling these really Global challenges that can get into that really that trench warfare mindset that unfortunately, it seems like we are a bit stuck in across the country and across the globe here today.

[00:18:23] What are some things that you learned about how leaders like McCain and Obama approached this either or dilemma and really moved into that both and to be successful?

[00:18:34] Wendy: We’re really big fans of saying the first thing is just noticing how often we frame. the problems as an either or, and we frame it as an us them.

[00:18:42] And so if I am on one side of the political spectrum, for example, and I just see or feel or sniff something that’s different than me, it’s them, it’s they, I, I, I resist, I reject. So there’s the framing question, noticing the either or, and then shifting. I also want to just name. There’s the emotional side of this too, which is that great leaders are able to notice how emotionally triggered they might get when people reject or resist, but then don’t get caught up in those triggers.

[00:19:11] We talk about it as finding comfort in the discomfort where the discomfort is how uncomfortable the uncertainty is, how uncomfortable it is to be in a space where. My truth and your truth can both be right, you know, and that discomfort. I mean, people are experiencing this certainly in the United States, but around the world, they’re experiencing that discomfort for sure.

[00:19:32] When it comes to politics, how uncomfortable it is that if somebody believes something different than me, like it’s just triggering. And what is it like to sit in that discomfort and still Recognize that you could honor and respect the person who believes something really different than you. I mean, I imagine people listening to this, I could just imagine like what it’s like if you have a strong political opinion to sit down with somebody who has a different political opinion and be open hearted to hear what they have to say, knowing that it’s uncomfortable, and yet knowing that you can sit through and, and, As we say, find comfort in the discomforts, be able to navigate that discomfort

[00:20:09] Katie: and coming from a place of respect and curiosity as well.

[00:20:13] And that, and that happens at work as well. I like that concept and it really resonates with me of the being comfortable with the discomfort. And, you know, I, you know, I talk about, we have to be more comfortable with this concept of struggle as well. We often have this mindset that we need to be sort of expert leaders or have everything nailed down.

[00:20:32] And how do we get more comfortable with, with that discomfort of learning something new or not being perfect? And then when we can let go of that, it actually puts us in much more of that learning mindset. And that we’re able to both be a leader and a learner at the same time, which seems to be one of those paradoxes that a lot of leaders that I work with feel challenged by, like, how can I be out there sort of leading the way, but I’m also trying to do something different.

[00:20:58] And that’s, Uncomfortable. So how do we get more comfortable with that discomfort and that that sense of struggle?

[00:21:04] Wendy: Yeah, I think that this leans into part of the challenge of the leader being able to have vulnerability and the courage of vulnerability, the power, the boldness, the courageousness of vulnerability.

[00:21:18] What does it mean for the leader to say, I don’t know? How can the lead and, and what we find, and this is Brené Brown’s research, and this is a little bit of Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety, that creating the conditions where the leader can say, I don’t know, or help me learn or tell me more, or I need to know more actually opens the door for everybody else to be a learner.

[00:21:41] And by doing that leads the way into a learning mindset, into a psychologically safe mindset. And so there we see that ironic Both and the ways in which power and boldness of uncertainty creates more the conditions in which you are going to lead other people to be learners as well, which is what you want in your organization.

[00:22:03] Katie: And how can this embracing of the, the both and mindset actually be what creates that, that growth or growth mindset that Carol Dweck talks about too, or the, the real learning organization. And

[00:22:14] Wendy: I think you can name it, right? You can name like being in, Learning mode is about experimenting, trying, failing.

[00:22:21] Being in performance mode is about not failing. And can you name those two poles and just use the language as a leader? People often ask me, well, what do you have to do as a leader to lean into both? And well, part of it is just getting people on the same page with the language. You know, I have, I have leaders who the language they use is.

[00:22:38] you know, if you’re going to live, you have to breathe. And so you have to breathe in and breathe out, or it’s like a stop sign. You’ve got to stop and go and, you know, rest. And, and so how could you use the language to say, this is a both and like leaning learning is different than performing. We got to do them both.

[00:22:54] We got to breathe in and breathe out. That’s the role of the leader to create the conditions for the team, to be able to see. sit with that kind of complexity.

[00:23:02] Katie: So powerful. And I talked with Eduardo Briceño about this learning zone versus performance zone on one of the early episodes of this podcast. So I encourage listeners to go back and listen to that because he talks about how we can, how we can actually do that more effectively.

[00:23:16] And as Wendy’s saying here, be aware of when can we be in this learning zone and when can we be in this performing zone and, and how do we, can we label that? So again, it doesn’t have to be, you’re always performing or you’re only learning. And both.

[00:23:31] Wendy: Yeah. And Katie, I want to say first, I love Eduardo and I love his work.

[00:23:34] And, uh, I love the idea that we have these different tools or these different approaches. So we’ve got the learning zone and the performing zone. And I want to then push us to that next step in the both and, and let’s name how being in the learning zone allows us to perform better. And how, let’s name that relationship between them.

[00:23:52] Cause that’s what gets us to the depth of the creative.

[00:23:56] Katie: Love that. And in naming it, not just for yourself, but he said, like, I say, labeling it, like telling people what you’re doing and why, because we often, you know, this is a great leadership skill to have. It’s like, we assume people know what’s going on for us inside or just can, can tell, but the more we put it out there and say like, Uh, this is a situation where we can be more learning and like almost narrating what the situation is or what we’re doing actually creates the conditions where people can understand and learn, um, as well.

[00:24:24] And it keeps you aware and intentional about your, your actions. The

[00:24:27] Wendy: greatest leaders that I’ve worked with are the ones that are constantly saying, Hey, What’s the both and? Hey, what’s the both? And I have to do it again and again and again. How

[00:24:36] Katie: can listeners start bringing in this both and thinking for themselves personally?

[00:24:43] That’s the first question. And then as you’re trying to like build this sort of organizational muscle for both and thinking. So let’s start off with, with the personal level. How can, how can you start bringing in more of this framework and, and action?

[00:24:56] Wendy: I mean, we like to say that it’s starting with noticing how questions are framed to us and changing the questions we ask my colleague Ella Marone Spector over in INSEAD in Paris in Fontainebleau and you’re in France, has done some research where she just changed the questions that she asked of people.

[00:25:14] Students in the lab. And by changing a question from noticing this is these things are in conflict with each other, and we have to choose between them to how can we accommodate them both? It led to all kinds of more creative outcomes. So if we can notice, Oh, gosh, I have to live in City A or City B. Do we have a child or do we not have a child work or life leading or learning or performing?

[00:25:37] I mean, all these tensions that you’ve just noticed here, if people think of any of the challenges that they face, naming the competing demands and then reframing the question invites us into a whole different way of thinking.

[00:25:49] Katie: That’s great. And, and so let’s now take this to the organizational level. So, you know, a lot of organizations I work with are, you know, these are paradoxes that you talk about in your book and in some of the, which you’ve mentioned here, like that.

[00:26:00] short term, like we got to get the profits and the deliverables now, but we want to build this culture of continuous learning. It’s going to take a long term payoff or, you know, we want to be sustainable or, you know, like all these different trade offs. How can we start to create this muscle within organizations?

[00:26:20] Wendy: Kitty, I love that. You know, um, I like to say that 20 years ago when I first started teaching leadership and I teach in a business school and the concept of emotional intelligence was so novel, you know, it was like, Oh, wait, we have another intelligence besides just our cognitive intellectual intelligence.

[00:26:37] And we can have this social intelligence and here’s what it means. And now 20 years later, whatever, uh, when you talk about EQ or EI or however people label it, it’s People are like, Oh yeah, of course we know that’s important. We just need to know how to do it. I’m pretty convinced that in organizations and in leadership development in the next 20 years, we’re going to move from, Oh, wait, we frame our questions or our challenges, or we, we tend to approach life as an either or, and there’s this both and, and underlying that is the concept of paradox and living into interdependent opposites to, you know, Oh yeah, both.

[00:27:13] And I get it. We need that. How do we do it better? And I’m just, I’m pretty convinced that that is going to be a huge leadership competency that people are going to have to embrace because our organizations are so complex and the greatest leaders that we have out there now are saying, we can’t just choose between today and tomorrow or tradition and modernization or being global or being local or focusing on small things.

[00:27:35] Social, you know, focusing on the bottom line or focusing on social and environmental. We have to figure out how to do both and how these things reinforce each other. We just have to do that.

[00:27:44] Katie: And for my lean and continuous improvement practitioners out there who are listening, this is like, it can’t just be the technical process improvement we’re doing or focusing on the people.

[00:27:54] It’s both. both? How do we do both together and not just be like offline? How do we integrate them?

[00:28:00] Wendy: I also love your process improvement lean folks, because we like to say that this is an approach that’s 2, 500 years old, but we in organizations and in leadership are like late to the paradox party. We’re only now starting to embed this into how we think about leadership and organizations, but like the early.

[00:28:17] practitioners of this were like the Toyota production system. Anybody who’s studied TPS and Toyota production system and lean knew that it’s about having all the inventory we need and having no inventory or being able to like always be learning but performing it, you know, like Toyota production system really leaned into that kind of paradoxical mindset and led the way.

[00:28:38] Katie: Yes. I mean, I spend a lot of time in Japan and with Toyota leaders and their suppliers. And, you know, one of the things I think is really a great mindset they have is how they almost like set up those paradoxes, like of, of pushing themselves, like, Well, we’re going to set a higher goal. That’s going to like, we don’t know how to possibly do that, but this then challenges us to think both.

[00:29:00] And like, how can we opposed to where I see a lot of, um, companies in the West, you know, us, Europe, wherever setting goals, maybe based on what we think is possible rather than what we actually need. And so it’s that learning mindset of how does that stretch us?

[00:29:14] Wendy: Yeah, and that’s the both and question. How can we get to that ultimate goal of bringing together these opposing ideas and seeing how they reinforce each other?

[00:29:22] There it is.

[00:29:23] Katie: Wendy, you had an example at the end of the book I thought was really powerful about how Unilever was really bringing this both and mindset to an organizational level to develop this paradox system that you called it. I was hoping you could maybe share just a few of the key things that they did that that really enabled this both and thinking to be pervasive.

[00:29:44] Um, at the organizational level.

[00:29:46] Wendy: Yeah. Some of your listeners might be familiar with Paul Pullman and the Unilever sustainable living plan. When Paul Pullman started as the CEO of Unilever in 2008, 2009, he would say they were on a death spiral. And when he left in 2019, about 10 years later, they were one of the most, the top packaged goods company in America.

[00:30:06] And part of his commitment was that they were going to double their Bottom line, double their, their profits, their, their revenues, uh, through not in spite of not, but, but through because of a commitment to a whole set of social and environmental goals. And they had a very clear, very delineated set of what these goals were.

[00:30:27] They weren’t vague at all. They were very specific of how they were going to make a difference in the world. And so he was really leaning into at the strategic level, a commitment to navigating the system It’s what we call the sustainability paradox or an obligation paradox, the obligation to both making their company as effective as possible and enabling the external, the social, the environmental, the communities that they are part of multiple additional stakeholders as effective as possible.

[00:30:54] And I’ll just say one key, there was a couple of really key pieces that he did. The first thing he did was when we interviewed him, he said, the number one thing that I did was make sure I had a very clear, overarching, impassioned mission. Vision that encompass these competing demands. Their vision was to make sustainable living every day, every day of sustainable living.

[00:31:16] And that was both emotionally engaging and motivating, but it also was really clear that this was bringing together both the social and the financial. And the second thing he did. As he was really clear, this is going to bring up tensions. It’s going to bring up challenges. Like, do we create, you know, bottles and products that are larger size and therefore minimize the packaging, but then that minimizes our margins or do we create, you know, smaller packaging and higher margins?

[00:31:43] And for him, he was clear that he was going to live into and surface those tensions so that they work through that and be more creative about it.

[00:31:51] Katie: Starting with purpose, that’s bigger than just profit. Something people can really emotionally hook on is something we’ve talked about a lot on this podcast.

[00:31:59] And that is the unifying, like the purpose that can actually bring us together more effectively on those, the tensions that come up in those paradoxes, right? And something you brought up too, it was about encouraging. experimentation. I think that’s so key as well. It’s like we, we learn our way forward to how we’re going to do this.

[00:32:17] Right. So how can we use both the unthinking and then make experiments and, and then discover our way into that cohesive outcome that we’re hoping to get

[00:32:28] Wendy: for sure. And then constantly reevaluate and try new things for sure. I mean, that’s the experimentation mindset. You said, as you said, we, in the book, we work to bring together about 20, 25 years of research of different.

[00:32:40] strategies needed to enable both and as an overarching approach in our lives, in our businesses. And we have four buckets of things that are important. And one of our buckets, and it’s the one that we speak about the least, I’m so glad you said this, we call it being dynamic. And it’s that ongoing shifting, changing, learning, trying new things, processing, being open to serendipity and novelty along the way that enables us to constantly re evaluate how our competing demands are in relationship to one another.

[00:33:12] Katie: Well, thank you. Everyone could go and read more in Wendy’s fabulous book, both and, and thank you for being here, Wendy. I look forward to having more conversations together and encourage all our listeners to connect with Wendy. I’ll put more links in the show notes as well. Thank you for being here, Wendy.

[00:33:29] Yeah. Thanks for having me. One of the most valuable aha moments I had in this conversation with Wendy Smith. Was the realization that when we see choices as a paradox and either or a situation, we’re often jumping to conclusions of what we think are two polarizing solutions rather than understanding the real challenge or problem that we’re trying to solve.

[00:33:51] It goes back to our human habit of wanting to jump to solutions and to action in our discomfort with uncertainty by asserting certainty by creating these polarizing options. When I teach problem solving, whether it’s using A3 thinking, a format for problem solving and communication developed at Toyota, or basic plan do study adjust cycles, one of the biggest challenges I help leaders and process improvement experts alike to overcome is our human tendency to go to solutions or the choices we want to take for action when we really need to take time to first deeply understand what problem you’re trying to solve.

[00:34:29] What your choices really are, and what do you really want to achieve? The paradoxes are limiting your thinking of what might be possible. And remember, it all goes back to understanding purpose. What’s your purpose? And what’s your organization’s higher purpose? And how can you leverage purpose to be what unites seemingly conflicting options together?

[00:34:50] Be sure to check out Wendy’s book, both and thinking, and follow her on LinkedIn for regular insights about how to bring together thoughts about both and, and how we can manage the paradoxes that appear in our life and in our work. I’ll put links to connect with Wendy and her book in the episode show notes.

[00:35:06] As you reflect on this episode, Go back to the three step process. Wendy suggested for how you can deal with those dilemmas you’re facing or how you can coach the leaders you work with to think through what seems to be paradoxical choices in your organization. One name and acknowledge, name the dilemma of the competing demands that you’re facing and acknowledge that you’re framing it as an either or situation.

[00:35:31] Then change the question you’re asking. How could you do both? So the second step is pull apart the elements of the options to help you understand what the real choices are. What are the real things you’re trying to achieve? And then three, bring them together. How could you incorporate the elements that are most important into a different solution than you originally envisioned?

[00:35:53] One that includes elements of both, and then experiment your way forward. What are you learning along the way? This goes back to how we can think about coaching for problem solving and problem solving in our organizations. How can we use both and through our whole problem solving process? If you want to go deeper into some of the concepts that Wendy and I explored here, be sure to check out some other episodes of Chain of Learning, including episode five, in which Eduardo Briceño and I talk about how to overcome the paradox of performing or learning.

[00:36:26] And in episode three, where Carol Dweck and I explore how developing a growth mindset is the foundation of a continuous improvement culture. In episode 32, where Isaac Mitchell shares how deeply understanding a bigger purpose, both at the organizational and the personal level, helps you navigate the challenges and crises that emerge in organizational leadership.

[00:36:49] As a change leader, executive, or continuous improvement practitioner, your success hinges on your ability to reframe choices. to help bring people along on your vision for what could be possible. You can be both an expert and a coach. You can focus on business objectives and people development at the same time.

[00:37:07] You can deliver both needed short term business results and take a long term view that embraces innovation, sustainability, and a people focused culture. You can be a leader and a learner, and you can help your leaders and team members build the muscles for this thinking to stop seeing choices as binary and start embracing both and thinking today.

[00:37:28] If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe now and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues so we can all strengthen our chain of learning together. Thanks for being a link in my chain of learning today. I’ll see you next time. Have a great day.