Switch & Shift

Beyond Either/Or

There are times when an either/or, black or white, yes or no mindsets are useful:

  • If you’re in combat and someone’s shooting at you and your friends, you either shoot back or you don’t.
  • If you’re in a prospect’s office with a contract on the last day of your fiscal year, she either signs it or you go home empty-handed.
  • If you’re a politician on Election Day, the voters either put you in office or they don’t.

This whole either/or thing seems ingrained in our culture. Either liberal or conservative.  Either expert or peon. Either leader or follower. Either right-brained and analytical or left-brained and creative. Either can-do or defeatist. Either on board with the CEO’s plan or against it.

 

Aside from groupthink, either/or thinking is dysfunctional in another very harmful way: either/or thinking tries to fit a round, soft, creative peg (the human mind) into a hard, unyielding, yes-or-no hole of our own creation.

 

On a personal level, this either/or, all-or-nothing thinking can lead to depression: either you’re awesome or you suck, and when you realize (as we all must) that you aren’t a superhero, well, follow the logic: the only option remaining is that you’re terrible, the worst. You may as well not get out of bed, because it doesn’t matter anyway.

On an organizational level, this either/or thinking leads to much that is dysfunctional and toxic to our success, in the form of groupthink. It leads to highly creative, intelligent people checking the best part of their brains at the door each workday, as they defer blindly to the judgment of their higher-ups. It leads to those higher-ups missing vital input that could challenge their decisions in essential ways. And even when such input does battle its way to the top, either/or thinking leads C-suite leaders to discount the quality of the views they hear because they don’t respect the source (see “expert or peon,” above).

 

This whole either/or thing seems ingrained in our culture. Either liberal or conservative.  Either expert or peon. Either leader or follower.

 

Aside from groupthink, either/or thinking is dysfunctional in another very harmful way: either/or thinking tries to fit a round, soft, creative peg (the human mind) into a hard, unyielding, yes-or-no hole of our own creation. More accurate by far is to understand that most of our first attempts – at anything! – won’t fit at all; we’ll fail. But while the depressive stops and gives up, and while the scolding authoritarian points fingers and says, “I told you so,” the eventual winner will tweak methods and try again. And, if necessary, again. And probably again. And each time, like Thomas Edison who discovered 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb before he figured out how to actually make light appear, we will learn from our mistakes and be better for it.

Here’s the thing with our tendency toward either/or thinking: most of our life is not binary. Real life is very rarely ones or zeros, yes or no, thumbs up or thumbs down. Life is an essay test, and we get extra points for answering creatively!

Reject either/or thinking, on a personal level and on an organizational one. You’re smarter than that. You’re better than that! And if your leader isn’t… hang in there. You’ll have a new leader sooner or later.

 

Photo by  Kenneth Stewart Davies

Ted Coiné is a Forbes Top 10 Social Media Power Influencer and an Inc. Top 100 Leadership and Management Expert. This stance at the crossroads of social and leadership put him in a unique perspective to identify the demise of Industrial Age management and the birth of the Social Age. The result, after five years of trend watching, interviewing and intensive research, is his latest book, A World Gone Social: How Companies Must Adapt to Survive, which he co-authored with Mark Babbitt. An inspirational speaker and popular blogger, Ted is a pioneer of the Human Side of Business (#humanbiz) movement. He is also a serial business founder and three-time CEO. When not speaking at conferences and corporate functions, Ted advises CEOs on how to become Truly Social Leaders, or “Blue Unicorns” as they put it in A World Gone Social, in order to bring their companies into the Social Age. Ted’s advice: “Change is only scary if it’s happening to you. Instead, bring the change your competitors dread. That is something only a Social Age business leader can accomplish.”

  • http://www.alankay.ca Alan Kay

    So right Ted! This is especially true of our post-industrial economies. The gross inefficiencies of mindless win-lose scenarios that were covered up by the fat margins of an endless growth mindset are now up for question. It’s been said in various ways, but societies usually first turn against themselves before being defeated by others.

    Still, it has always been a both/and world – we just never saw it. Having to be ‘right’, is an option, not a mandatory. Now we can listen more carefully, decide where we agree and disagree, and move forward. Easy to say, but one simple practice is to change our use of the word, ‘but’ to ‘and’ in our sentences. Watch what happens.

  • http://www.essentialimited.com Lisa Shelley

    Love this Ted! I like to say we need more “yes, and” thinking vs either/or. Another theme on a similar vein… “live in the question versus having to know the answer”… so many more possibilities when we keep the questions open!

  • http://www.thejoyresolution.com Kathi Joy (@KathiJoy)

    Was just talking about dilemmas yesterday (either/or choices). When I find myself stuck in that place I like to employ the “both/and” concept – meaning that there maybe a bit of solution in both scenarios.

  • http://www.maritzmotivation.com/blog Michelle Pokorny

    This reminded me of a ‘growth mindset’ but in a different context than what Alan referenced. Carol Dweck studied childhood age students, and found that when praised for ‘attributes’ like smarts, creativity, patience… it actually lead to a fixed mindset and lead to avoidance or risk and challenge over time. When praised for effort, process, progress the students developed a growth mindset and were more successful and faced challenges and change better over time. This seems related to the winner takes all, right or wrong, either/or perspective above. Ironically, using a language of praise or encouragement would never use the words “you are smarter than that” or “you are better than that.”

  • There’s a more human way to do business.

    In the Social Age, it’s how we engage with customers, collaborators and strategic partners that matters; it’s how we create workplace optimism that sets us apart; it’s how we recruit, retain (and repel) employees that becomes our differentiator. This isn’t a “people first, profits second” movement, but a “profits as a direct result of putting people first” movement.

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