Beyond 'This vs. That'
The Problem with False Binaries at Work
Boss 1: I really need you to focus on the how, not the what.
Employee A: ...but shouldn’t the what influence the how?
Boss 2: Here, we prioritize execution.
Employee B: ...even if we don’t know what strategy we’re supposed to be executing against?
Boss 3: At this company, it’s important to get everyone aligned around a common strategy.
Employee C: ...even though we haven’t delivered or executed a single thing in months?
I really could go on, but I won’t. This is but a tiny fraction of the black-and-white thinking I’ve encountered over the years in the working world. (Scroll down to check out my non-exhaustive ‘this vs. that’ list. Recognize any?)
Singular examples like these seem innocuous, meriting no more than a dismissive shrug, maybe an eye roll — or even a nod of agreement from some of you. In fact, there are many useful reasons we separate ‘this vs. that’: anthropological, social, psychological.
For example, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss found that a uniting factor across humanity was our tendency to see the world in terms of binary oppositions. German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel structured dialectics to enable productive inquiry and discourse based around two opposing sides. German sociologist Max Weber defined ‘ideal types’ as heuristic tools designed for understanding and modeling the real world. As with all heuristics, ideal types simplify real-world complexity, in their case by essentializing what is being examined. For example, you have likely come across an ideal types analysis of leaders: the charismatic leader, the quiet leader, and so on.
The common thread? ‘This vs. that’ is helpful analytically — but it is not reflective of reality.
Best illustration of Levi-Strauss’ binary oppositions, IMHO. And complete with a little motivational bonus from Merlin:
You must set your sights upon the heights
Don't be a mediocrity
Don't just wait then trust to fate
And say, "That's how it's meant to be"
It's up to you how far you go
If you don't try, you'll never know
And so my lad as I've explained
Nothing ventured, nothing gainedBut we love simple answers to complex problems. Resorting to black-and-white thinking is a tempting way to confront complexity and accompanying messiness. But black-and-white thinking isn’t all good. Here is an excerpt from the WebMD entry on it:
Black-and-white thinking is a thought pattern that makes people think in absolutes. For instance, you may think you are either always right or the world’s biggest failure. Psychologists consider this thought pattern to be a cognitive distortion because it keeps you from seeing life the way it really is: complex, uncertain, and constantly changing.
And what we do within organizations is incredibly complex: collaborating across disciplines, teams, and often timezones to build products; managing and leading diverse teams of people; navigating dynamic and unpredictable market and political environments; responding to changing customer demands.
The thing is, exchanges like those in the introduction aren’t typically one-offs. They tend to reflect broader organizational narratives — which in turn reflect and/or shape organizational mindsets and cultures. To illustrate one way this might come to be, imagine:
A respected senior leader makes an organization-wide announcement meant to create a sense of urgency and motivate everyone to beat a quarterly deadline. In a rhetorical move, that leader makes a rallying cry: “Execution eats strategy for lunch!”1 Over the next several months, every employee on every team is all-in on prioritizing all things execution, and the organization beats the deadline — hooray! The senior leader celebrates along with the team, praising excellence in execution and enjoying congratulations from the C-suite.
With all that success and positive reinforcement, each person on the team — including the senior leader — begins to internalize that execution always matters more than strategy. Prioritizing execution over strategy makes decision-making around things like allocation of budget and headcount much simpler. “Execution eats strategy for lunch” imperceptibly morphs from rallying cry into a credo.
Fast forward six months, and the same team is producing a ton of stuff, but the value of that stuff is questionable at best. People who were hired to do research and strategy work for the company feel lost and underappreciated. There is no strategy to execute against. The lunch tray is empty.
Therein lies the problem: When black-and-white thinking becomes an organizational driver, the organization itself becomes less capable of operating in the complex, messy real world. Although ‘this vs. that’ can be a helpful analytical and decision-making tool, the separation can also become overly formalistic and neglect the interrelated nature of most binaries. The heuristics that help us process complexity may also eliminate depth of thinking and lead us astray. H. L. Mencken captured it well: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Moreover, ‘this vs. that’ can quickly become ‘us vs. them.’ This happens because some of the binaries that emerge within organizations align with particular teams or departments. Sprinkle in organizational power dynamics — like more funding and headcount, higher salaries, greater decision-making authority, easier access to executives, sometimes even blatant cronyism — and over time, the teams focused on ‘THIS’ becomes favored over the teams focused on ‘that’. I’m sure you can extrapolate how that plays out.
So what are we to do with all of this?
Are we to abandon categories, models, heuristics, and analytical tools? (A fun aside: Statistics are one of those useful tools for making sense of the uncertainty around us. Check out one of the more interesting articles I’ve read recently, authored by David Spiegelhalter, emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Cambridge, UK. He concludes the piece, “In our everyday world, probability probably does not exist — but it is often useful to act as if it does.”)
No. I’m not suggesting that at all. Approaching everything as fluid and category-less breaks down quickly, stymying decisions, fostering overwhelm, and generating excessive confusion.
But I am suggesting that as we come across black-and-white thinking at work, we stop for a moment and:
Acknowledge that the black-and-white thinking is simplifying something far more complex.
Appreciate which assumptions we may be making, or glosses we may be applying, to land on the black-and-white model.
Consider how the black-and-white model is helpful, in what context, and for what purposes.
Accept that the black-and-white model has limitations and commit to questioning what they are early and often.
Ask whether explicitly embracing complexity, messiness, and uncertainty may be more useful for a particular situation.
Put more simply: let’s not create misunderstanding using the very tools we’ve invented to help us with understanding.
Non-exhaustive list of ‘this vs. that’ at work
Management vs. leadership
Substance vs. process
What vs. how
Engineering vs. science
Execution vs. strategy
Operations vs. core business
Create vs. protect
Product envision vs. product discover
Revenue generation vs. cost center
Technical vs. nontechnical
Science vs. art
Subjective vs. objective
Qualitative vs. quantitative
What would you add?
Though the origin of this quote is unknown, it’s presumably derived from Peter Drucker’s quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”