Need to be Both / And Leadership

HBR article “Both/And” Leadership by Wendy K. Smith, Marianne W. Lewis, Michael L. Tushman has brought out a perspective where it says Don’t worry so much about being consistent. Instead it is the paradoxes which help you to progress and be adaptable.

HBR Article covers issues on leadership how it is more inspired by early institutions such as Military establishment. 

The authors’ states how traditional leadership styles need to undergo a change. In current organizational setup we see these two below listed styles still surviving, thriving. 

The styles are reproduced below from the article:

Scarcity of Resources

Traditional leadership approaches assume that resources—time, money, people, and so on—are limited. This is not altogether surprising when you think of the constraints that managers at lower levels of an organization face. Resources are typically fixed by a higher authority—a state of affairs that doesn’t change much until you are the higher authority, by which time the idea that resources are limited has been baked into you. It becomes natural for executives to look for sources of constraint—and they often find them in “market expectations” or “competitor threats.” But assuming that resources are constrained necessarily results in zero-sum thinking: Allocating resources to one goal means that they are no longer available for another. This fuels conflict between managers with different agendas.

In contrast, leaders who embrace paradox realize that resources, viewed in a different light, can be abundant and often generative. Rather than seeking to slice the pie thinner, people with this value-creating mindset pursue strategies to grow the pie, such as exploring collaborations with new partners, using alternative technologies, or adopting more-flexible time frames for shifting resources for better use.

Acceptance of inconsistency

Leaders seek to reduce their followers’ discomfort with uncertainty by asserting control—making decisions that minimize complexity and emphasize stability. This, too, is understandable: Traditional leadership and management theory was heavily influenced by studies of the military, which prizes regularity. Therefore, business managers have long been encouraged to build a common culture, where everyone is headed in the same direction, speaks the same language, and shares best practices.

But when the strategic environment changes, this approach often results in defensive and detrimental actions. As we’ve discussed, NASA’s leaders resisted open innovation methods because scientists were invested in individual research and felt threatened by the idea of collaboration. Polaroid famously lost the battle for the digital-imaging market partly because company leaders committed to applying their successful analog-camera strategy—making money on the film, not the camera—to a market that no longer printed out pictures.

Its time, for corporate leaders to change their mindset. They should be open for learning.

The authors have rightly quoted Nobel Prize–winning physicist Niels Bohr, “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”

Reference:

https://hbr.org/2016/05/both-and-leadership