Use Both/And Thinking to Solve Tough Problems
Guest Speaker Marianne W. LewisIn this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Marianne Lewis, co-author of Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems. Marianne’s research and vast experience shows that embracing both/and thinking, or paradox thinking, results in more creative, lasting solutions and more satisfied people. Marianne is the dean and professor of management at the Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati. She previously served as dean of Cass Business School at City, University of London, and as a Fulbright scholar. A thought leader in organizational paradoxes, she explores tensions and competing demands surrounding leadership and innovation. Collaborating with international researchers and executives, her work examines the management of paradoxes in contexts from product development and organizational change to governance and career development. Lewis has been recognized among the world’s most-cited researchers in her field (Web of Science database) and received the Paper of the Year award (2000) and Decade Award (2021) from the Academy of Management Review. Her work also appears in such journals as Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Journal, and Organization Science. Lewis earned her MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and her PhD from the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. She enjoys her three children and two grandchildren from her home base in Cincinnati.
Listen to the full episode here:
Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Google
INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS
What is both/and thinking? Sue and Marianne dive into examples of how this problem-solving method moves beyond either/or situations into finding creative solutions to difficult problems. Stemming from tensions between seemingly opposing values such as the choice between profit and sustainability, performing and learning, or compassion and competency. Our brains are wired to see these sort of paradoxical options as one or the other, but when applying both/and thinking we see creative ways of combining these tensions to create new solutions.
Key takeaways and examples of both/and thinking:
- Paul Polman at Unilever was able to double profits while cutting the company’s environmental footprint in half within a decade by using and/both thinking. He chose to look at the profit vs sustainability dilemma as an opportunity to make change, and it was a resounding success that pioneered the way for future companies. (12:13)
- Leaders who face the challenge of performance vs learning succeed when finding creative ways of choosing both. When putting too much emphasis on one vs the other this can lead to burnout or lack of productivity but finding solutions to prioritize growth while supporting productivity can in turn fuel one another. (19:09)
- Hybrid work has posed a huge dilemma recently, between the paradoxes of separation vs connection or in person vs remote. With companies navigating in-person vs. remote work, hybrid has become a solution for many, but when done wrong, hybrid can lead to some serious issues. On the other hand, when done well it can lead to thriving teamwork and productivity. Marianne gave the company RocketBook as a wonderful example of how to operate in hybrid that prioritizes workers ‘deep work’ times while still maintaining intentional team building. (24:24)
- Marianne also discusses how women in leadership can often find themselves struggling to find the balance between competence and compassion. This is a perfect example of when both/and thinking can create a wonderful balance within leadership. Women do not have to lead as strictly to be respected, when allowing compassion and softness to also be present, women can often lead as their more authentic selves. (35:02)
Both/and thinking is not as easy as it sounds. It truly comes to play when the paradoxes are extreme, and the stakes are high. It takes more than just finding a happy medium or balance in any one given situation, it requires creative integration. It’s meant to be used continuously, to work towards a solution by making small choices on an ongoing basis to support the overall goal. It takes a great amount of effort, focus, and creativity to produce the unique and impactful solutions it can bring.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“For us both/and thinking is a life approach. It’s thinking on an ongoing basis, because paradoxes don’t go away. They’re interwoven contradictions.” (8:54)
“So I think one missed misconception is, this is obvious and it’s easy. If it was, it would be the default, and it is not. Either/or is the default. This takes work and practice and a mindset.” (21:05)
“I think what we were learning increasingly, is sometimes our hardest times are where we find our greatest strengths, we find new opportunities.” (39:12)
RESOURCES
Marianne W. Lewis:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast, providing perspectives on leadership. Today we’re excited to welcome Marianne Lewis. Marianne is Dean and Professor of Management at the Linder College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. She previously served as dean of Cass Business School at City, University of London. And as a Fulbright scholar, a thought leader in organizational paradoxes, she explores tensions and competing demands surrounding leadership and innovation. Collaborating with international researchers and executives, her work examines the management of paradoxes in contexts from product development and organizational change to governance and career development. Louis has been recognized among the world’s most cited researchers in the field and received the Paper of the Year Award 2000 and the Decade Award in 2021. From the Academy of Management Review, her work also appears in such journals as HBR, Academy of Management Journal, and organization science. She earned her MBA from Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, and a PhD from Gatton College of Business Economics at the University of Kentucky. She has three children and two grandchildren from her home base in Cincinnati. And so I’m really happy to have you. And it’s not too late there, we’re good. I’m really excited about this topic. As I said to you, before we started, you know, I’ve been using this with my clients, and they’ve really liked it a lot. So I’m really happy to get into this. And I’ll probably have them do some more work and listen to our talk. So I just read your bio, but I often start, I always start actually, with asking the question beyond your bio, like, how did you get into this work? How did you decide to write this book? And give us a few stories?
Marianne Lewis 1:43
Well, I think the story starts in some ways a bit young, I’m an academic brat, my father was an academic, in operations management and kind of grew up fascinated by manufacturing. But he was a math guy, and I’m dyslexic. I can’t even say the word. So I’m a qualitative researcher, and I love the psych side of it. So I ended up doing a dissertation around automation in factories, but what was really tensions. And so here, I was coming in thinking I was studying one thing, and finding myself fascinated by others, right, this pole between is technology, de-skilling, or skill upgrading, is it about the flexibility or their control? And even as I kind of started to go down this path and say, What is this? I realized my whole life is a tension. I mean, I think so many of us we struggle with, whether it’s the work family, it’s you know, being a leader who is confident and humble, thinking about, you know, my competence and skills or caring and the people and me, there’s so many areas, it was really that aha moment where I said, I think there’s something much greater here. And I started shifting from a phenomena like manufacturing and automation to tensions, and went down the path to study. How have these been examined in philosophy, and psychology, and mysticism, and religion, and places that a lot of my, especially my dissertation advisors, were like, don’t go there. This is your business person. You know, there have been 1000s of years literally, of work on paradoxes, especially on religion and mysticism, and the Taoist kind of use and others. And I thought, well, Yungian, for sure. So it was like, okay, you always stand on the shoulders of giants, you need to know who they are, you need to kind of go there. And so the paper that you mentioned, that won the 2000 Awards, that’s our top journal and Management was a paper that everybody told me not to write. And I think I’m a rebel at heart. You know, I’m like a conservative rebel. I’ve got lots of tension in my own self. And it started this crazy and wonderful career Sue, where I became the person that other researchers reached out to and said, I’ve seen them. Help me, you know, so I’d have somebody say, I’m studying boards of directors, and we’re trying to figure out is the board’s role to monitor and control or is it about stewardship and teamwork. Yes, right. Or I’d have to say it, are we about social responsibility or financial responsibility? Yes. Right. And then, and so you get into these fascinating challenges. But I was the theorist onboard, other people were doing the heavy lifting around the data. And I got to kind of really start to study it. And then it became not only about tensions but about leadership. Because if the leader doesn’t have a mindset that thinks about them and nobody else is, right, you’re gonna approach these as trade-offs and miss so much opportunity.
Sue Bethanis 4:59
Right okay, I love it. I love it. Thank you for that. So I do want to get into this idea of both/and thinking, but before we do that, I want to have you define some of these topics. So you mentioned tensions. You mentioned paradoxes. So what are these? You have tension dilemmas and paradoxes. How are those, those sounds similar. Yeah. How are they different?
Marianne Lewis 5:20
They are similar, and the way I think about them is they’re very much interrelated. So, we start with tensions because you feel tension. So, you can even say the word and like, I can feel it in my chest, it feels like a tug of war. Right? I’m being pulled, pulled in the way of saying, the way I’m feeling, the way I’m acting. A dilemma is that next step, where we actually put a frame around it as a problem. And we frame it as okay, what do we do in the tensions, and that becomes this dilemma, this decision-making point. And then paradoxes to us is this next big step of, and I always kind of have the vision of the Yin Yang in my head. And if people can kind of imagine, you know, the two slivers light and dark. Within each sliver, you can see the opposite of black or white, the point of Yin Yang is that actually contradictions define each other. And there actually is an ebb and flow and there’s a dynamic. So even though Yin Yang is like a static image, almost the flow of the light to the dark, the dark to the light. And that to us, is that step change of how do we move off this trade-off mindset of a dilemma to thinking, but I need both sides of this equation, and how do I start to shift the way I approach them? Because I’ve moved now from feeling the tension to framing the dilemma, to approaching it as a paradox.
Sue Bethanis 6:47
Okay, that makes sense. Okay. Do you see both/and thinking as different from paradoxical thinking? Or is it really the same thing? Do you define them the same? Or?
Marianne Lewis 6:59
Well, I think they’re, you couldn’t say that they’re the same thing. I think one of the issues with paradoxical thinking, which is a term that has been used in a variety of ways is it doesn’t necessarily tell you how to navigate the tensions. So what Wendy Smith, my coauthor, and I were trying to do is, yes, think about kind of paradoxical thinking. Other people have called it Janusian Thinking like looking opposite ways. Isn’t that a cool idea? So a brilliant researcher in the 70s, talk Janusian Thinking so think of the Greek god who basically is looking two ways simultaneously.
Sue Bethanis 7:34
Oh, yeah. I like that. Yeah, I didn’t know that’s what that was.
Marianne Lewis 7:37
I think it’s a cool one. And it was one of the early studies that got me really energized. So Rothenburg studied geniuses, Einstein, Mozart, Picasso, and Virginia Wolf, okay. And was reading all their diaries and doing all this work about like, basically, where does the creative genius, what’s the fuel? And what he found with these, the commonality was they actually embraced tensions. They saw them as creative friction that opened new possibilities. So you know, Mozart, it was harmony and discord. Einstein it was this thing’s in motion and still, particles in waves, Virginia Woolf, it was life and death. Picasso was light and dark. And the point is, that they didn’t shy away, they did the opposite. They looked for tensions as opportunities for really powerful creativity. Oftentimes, they would like all of them would joke like on the verge of madness.
Sue Bethanis 8:40
right? Yes.
Marianne Lewis 8:41
So Janusian thinking was his language of how do you embrace the tensions and look in opposing directions simultaneously for creative opportunity.
Sue Bethanis 8:50
I like that Janusian and how do you spell it?
Marianne Lewis 8:54
Janusian. But paradoxical thinking, you know Roger Martin does really cool work on the kind of integrative thinking. And it’s for these kinds of one-off efforts. For us, both/and thinking is a life approach. It’s thinking on an ongoing basis because paradoxes don’t go away. They’re interwoven contradictions. That we could make a decision today and we might need integrative thinking or paradoxical thinking that we will have to figure out short and long-term, work and life, we make decisions all the time and we will make them again. Because they don’t go away. We need both sides.
Sue Bethanis 9:36
I think I was working with this team a couple of weeks ago, well now it’s been about a month. We were kind of … let me throw this out, let me see what you think of it. So we were thinking about both/and thinking as more divergent thinking and it being brainstormy and then when you’re converging your choices. And I also talked about how – so we said that was similar enough, analogous enough, I wasn’t sure if I exactly liked it, they came up with that. But I also said that the third way is really important in that’s why I like both/and so much is because it’s juxtaposed to either/or because we typically do like, what are the two choices? And it’s like, oh, I think there’s usually a third choice or a third way. So while we do have to converge, it doesn’t necessarily need to be either/or thinking it’s just a distillation. What do you say to all that?
Marianne Lewis 10:33
Well, I think it’s tricky the way you just said it, because I think about innovation as necessarily paradoxical because it requires divergent and convergent thinking. Right? So I don’t think both/and is just divergent because at some point, you have to bring them together. And you’re right, I like the way you just said it. Sometimes people say, Well, wait, isn’t it either-or thinking if you say it’s either both/and thinking or either-or thinking. And actually, the point is, depending on the decision that needs to be made, and the timing it needs to meet, sometimes you do have to do either/or thinking. But in the context of this broader ongoing, both/and right, it’s today we might need to make this decision, we call this tightrope walking. But it doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to need the opposite like divergent convergent at some point. But it’s an interplay between the way we think, and that’s where it gets more complicated to think about. All right, yeah. We do make decisions. You have to make decisions.
Sue Bethanis 11:33
Right. I think that what I was trying for them in this is very common, is that I think the main thing where I would help them was that they needed to continue the conversation and not be stuck in: we’re either gonna do it this way or this way. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, keep going.
Marianne Lewis 11:51
Yeah. Well, yeah. Because he either-or thinking it tends to be or default, and it’s so limiting.
Sue Bethanis 11:55
It is a default. And it happens in school. I mean, this is something that it’s been ingrained. Certainly, yeah, we can get out of it. So let’s talk about some more examples, I gave you a specific example, and I gave you a particular group. But I mean, give us some more examples of how we leaders can use both/and thinking.
Marianne Lewis 12:13
Okay, I mean, I think it’d be kind of a variety. So you tell me if this one works, and we can kind of add more personal. We started at a very strategic level, right? So my work really all started with corporate strategy and innovation. And then we got to more personal teams and even more individuals. So if I start at kind of the big level, and to me, I’d probably make that kind of strategy. In our last chapter, we focus a lot on somebody that I’ve studied for years, Paul Polman and Unilever. So this is an interesting example, because Paul takes over Unilever when they’re failing, right, they’re really in trouble. And he basically says, ‘All right, we touch (this was at the time), we touch 2 billion consumers a day, we have to be more socially responsible, we need to think about sustainability.’ And then people said, but it’s about profit, right? We’re a major multinational company. And he said, it has to be both. And so he built the Unilever sustainable living plan on this paradoxical both/and approach of we are going to double our profit by halving our environmental footprint. And people said you’re crazy. That doesn’t work that way. The bigger you get, the bigger your negative impact. And he said, No, we can’t. And so one of the key tactics we talked about is separating and connecting and Unilever and Paul did this quite a bit. As they say, look, for every project, every project, I’m going to ask you, what’s happening to profit? What’s happening to sales, what’s happening to costs, how is the market share? And I’m going to ask you say, say we’re taking a new product, Pantene as an example, he used to use, like into one of the African nations, and he would say, tell me what you’re doing with water. How are you cutting water? How are you reducing transportation costs? How are you engaging the local community? And in some ways, it reminds me of, you know, once upon a time, people thought Toyota was crazy that quality and costs couldn’t be working together. And he found the same thing with sustainability. The more you did the kinds of things to reduce their environmental footprint, it also lowered costs. And by the way, it attracted new investors, new customers, because they said, that’s the company I like. And so they ended up being this Yin and Yang and working together. And sure enough, he hit the target, double their profits, half their environmental footprint, and completely turned the firm around. And people thought he was crazy.
Sue Bethanis 14:38
What was the time period of that?
Marianne Lewis 14:41
It was a little less than a decade. Which is impressive,
Sue Bethanis 14:44
right? For a firm like how long ago?
Marianne Lewis 14:47
He just wrote his book net positive, I’d have to grab it, but I would say it was like 10 years ago. I mean, he’s he retired after a decade there.
Sue Bethanis 14:55
And I’m just curious how it’s done. What’s happened since?
Marianne Lewis 15:00
Well, and I couldn’t say necessarily for Unilever, but one of the cool things with Paul. And what he’s done is he started a nonprofit called Imagine coordinating with the multinational CEOs globally. He’s the primary, one of the primary advisors to the UN, saying, This is what we need to do. And so he’s got more and more CEOs that are basically signing up to it. And he works with and then they work together because he did things that were really bold like because you have a short-term/long-term tension in this too. And he said to the financial analysts, I’m not giving you quarterly reports. It’s too short-termism. It was a huge deal when he did it, and moved toward a B Corp. And their stocks.
Sue Bethanis 15:49
Oh really? I didn’t know that I was going to ask you that.
Marianne Lewis 15:50
Right, it did exactly what you’d expect. And then the next thing you know – because he had to kind of work through the people that said, I can’t handle that. I can’t handle that uncertainty. I want to know, every quarter. And then he said, but the stock market is actually supposed to be long-term. It’s just not played that way.
Sue Bethanis 16:06
I mean, this is Roger Martin’s whole point. Yes. I mean, this is his. I mean, he’s, he’s one of my gurus, for sure. I’ve known him for a long time. And I got to know him through design thinking more stuff with PNC, but he wrote that one book about the NFL and a the other book about capitalism. And just like how it’s so screwed up that we have quarterly, you know, it’s just ridiculous. Right, God, and there’s so much work that has to go into it. And you? Yeah, so they, how did they get away with that, though? How did they get away with the SCC, and all that? Is there? Are there any rules around that?
Marianne Lewis 16:43
Well, part of it was they moved toward this B Corp model, which is being adopted now more, but they were one of the early pioneers. And you need pioneers.
Sue Bethanis 16:53
Yeah, that’s awesome. So it’s called net positive? Yes, I’ll check it out. I’m going to go to the SOCAP in a month, which is the social impact conference that they have here. So a lot of the B corps go to that it’s really cool.
Marianne Lewis 17:11
We have different examples of, you know, hybrid organizations, and social enterprises in the book because Wendy even more as studied a number like digital data divide, there are some really interesting companies. Because, you know, you could say the same thing for a nonprofit to serve your mission, you have to be financially viable. Right. And sometimes you can lose sight of one versus the other. So like with DDD and their leader, you know, he could go too far in the mission, and then lose the financial sustainability. And so he was navigating this in kind of, in some ways, like flipping figure and ground than you would have in a multinational, but realizing you can’t serve your people or your mission if you don’t have the money to do it. So he’d have to build in the discipline. And that was a real challenge for him. It was just the opposite challenge of Unilever Right, exactly.
Sue Bethanis 18:07
Right. Yeah. And I can see why this kind of thinking, both/and thinking, paradoxical thinking can be applied to visioning. And that’s, it’s not that it’s easy, because nothing’s easy. But you know, you should think about some of the things that have come through the pipe, with corporations and diversity and yes, you know, until we tied it to the bottom line, sustainability, diversity, it’s like there wasn’t going to be a bolt down there. But once it was tied to the bottom line, and people then you could, so I can see that. And it’s not again, not that it’s easy, but what about just like everyday decision-making? Not just envisioning, per se.
Marianne Lewis 18:52
But every day. Yeah.
Sue Bethanis 18:53
So what are some examples of some everyday decision-making that you literally like you’d be facilitating as the VP or whatever, and you’re, you’re facilitating your hearing, you know, too much one-sidedness or whatever, how could you stop the facilitation and say, Hey, let’s look at the third way, or what would you do in that situation?
Marianne Lewis 19:09
Well, I’ll give you a different kind of example, that has come up increasingly, in some of the talks I’ve had with leaders, which is a tension between performing and learning. Yeah, that’s right. You got to hit your targets. So I had one leader, she explained it, you know, it’s the head down, you got to keep your head down, keep moving, hit the targets. Sometimes you got to pull your head up and take a deep breath and think okay, so how am I learning myself and helping my team learn for the future, they take very different mindsets, activities, right spaces, and sometimes. And so this leader, in particular, was saying, she’s now made it much more of a practice with her team to even use this language of head down and head up. Because if we’re only doing one without the other, if all you’re doing is putting your head down, this is the workaholic burnout mode, you are hitting your targets. And if all you’re doing is learning, it’s fabulous. I mean, I’m in higher ed, but you’re not hitting the targets. And you’re kind of hitting the clouds and you’re missing opportunities. So the big challenge and opportunity, to is to say, how are these interwoven? Right? How is my learning, always kind of fuels my performance, because I’m making new connections, as in people or in ideas to connect the dots, and new best practices are coming in. And at the same time, my level of performing is opening a new mind to new opportunities to say, what do I need? I don’t know what I don’t know. Right? And if I can have the mindset that I know, I’m going to need both, right, right, you can avoid going too far what we call going down the rabbit hole. And if you overemphasize one without the other, you find yourself in trouble.
Sue Bethanis 20:54
Right. Okay. What I think this one question here is, is interesting, like, what is the biggest misconception about both/and thinking? What would you say that people either criticize it, or they don’t get it? Or
Marianne Lewis 21:05
I think there are a few. So one that I’ve had people say to me as well, duh? Isn’t that obvious and isn’t that easy? And I’ve already said it once Sue, but I would say it again, it is not easy. It is not. Because you’re really if you’re actually talking about true tensions. You can’t do them simultaneously. Right? You either learn how to juggle, or you learn some creative integration, which is Roger’s work, right? But none of that is easy. So I think one missed misconception is, this is obvious and it’s easy. If it was it would be the default, and it is not. Either/or is the default. This takes work and practice and a mindset. I think the other is that you’re always seeking a win-win. So, I too think very highly of Roger Martin’s work. And I think his work is really about the creative integration or Wendy and I call this the mule, right? Smarter than a donkey, stronger than a horse. And the thing with that analogy is also mules are steroidal, meaning they’re one-offs, they’re brilliant. And when they happen, I think they’re rare. And when they happen, they’re fantastic. It’s that creative, wow, that helps you find a win-win. But the more likely outcome that we see we call tightrope walking, which means you’re viewing this vision in the distance that is both, you know, that has this big picture of we are going to be financially and socially responsible, we are going to be learning and performing, you know, whatever, and you’re making these micro shifts on an ongoing basis, right, you’re trying not to lean so far over that you go down a rabbit hole and fall off. And you’re making decisions, back to your point of either/or, we may have to make decisions on a daily basis of where we putting our time, energy, and resources. But we have to do it in a way that says we’re doing it here. So that right either it’s funding, energizing, enabling the other and you’re going back and forth. And so that tightrope walking is really what we tend to see most often. And then the challenge is how do you build some guardrails? So, you don’t forget the opposing side, because we are going to lean toward our comfort zone. Because for almost any tension, you can imagine we have a place in ourselves that we prefer, right? It’s just it’s our strong suit, right? I’m a workaholic, I’m gonna lean toward performance. But that’s not going to get me where I want to go. If I don’t remember to pull up.
Sue Bethanis 23:43
I like what we’ve talked about so far in some of these examples around you know, the both/and thinking regarding strategic and visioning think visioning and then also the dichotomy or this tension of performance and learning. So, again, I want to get back to some more examples, our audience loves examples. So what are some other things that we can apply this to some other scenarios, some other decision-making situations, especially with executives, in terms of how they can, you know, like, even prioritization, a lot of people now are reprioritizing pivoting, you know, what they’re doing these days.
Marianne Lewis 24:24
I’ll give you two that we could play with one is kind of the hybrid work. I think it’s working out well, right? Yes. The other is kind of a women’s leadership challenge that we’ve seen showing up again, between competency and compassion. Right. So those are two I’ve seen. So if we go to kind of the hybrid, Wendy and I ended up kind of doing a little work on this post-pandemic because people were saying, oh, you know, hybrid work is the best of both worlds. And what most of us have seen is it can be the worst of both, right? Because you could be working at home but boundaries have gone so everything is blurring together. You’re not really feeling like you’re doing well in anything, guilt builds up, all sorts of things are happening, right and when you go into the office, nobody’s there, you don’t really know why you’re there. Right? It’s just not the office of the past, in some ways. And so, you know, I’ll give you an interesting example. We did some work with Rocketbook. And I don’t know if you know, rocket book, they’re really cool startup, they were bought by Bic recently. So they do, I was looking around, I used to have one of the, it’s reusable. These are reusable notebooks. So a single notebook can be used again and again, you can upload it to the cloud through a simple kind of taking a picture. It’s got QR codes. It’s a really cool technology. And so we, I had seen through some kind of connections that they did this hybrid work in a really interesting way. So we ended up talking to their, two founders, CEOs, co CEOs. And I said, Well, tell me what you think what hybrid work looks like at rocket book? And more importantly, why? And they said, Well, you know, pre-pandemic, we were already into hybrid work.
Sue Bethanis 26:16
Yeah a lot of companies were doing rural, or remote.
Marianne Lewis 26:21
And it made them in a better position during and after too because right, this wasn’t some big shock, but it’s still I think it gives us lessons to learn from. So when we say separate and connect, we think that those are just the two big two core practices of both/and thinking. So, part of is separating to really think, what, what do I value most in each sphere? I mean, at its best, what does it look like to be working at home versus working at work? And by the way, what are the dangers if that’s all you do, right? So kind of mapping that out. And these guys got really into the idea of, and it makes so much sense that deep work, deep work happens best in a quiet, nonoffice, non-distraction, and at your best bio times, right? Like I’m a morning person, you know, I know when my quality time is right, and then when it’s not gonna go to the grocery store, right? Do it, you know, that use the time that makes the most sense. And then they have also a very strong sense that when they want people in the office is when it’s around the whiteboard. It’s about collaborative problem-solving. It’s with purpose, right to be together. And the Yin Yang was they said, the more we made sure we had that really good quality time together, the more people could read each other’s body language, their eye movements, their sarcasm, all these things that when they were on a screen, you need it. Right? You had the relationship, you had the deeper understanding. And these are really high-performing engineers, designers, and others in their firm. They wanted deep work, they wanted this social and connection and creativity together. And so they built a whole set of guardrails. So people could respect whichever side that you’re using work or home. And, you know, they built it into kind of very simple, almost like you know, Reed Hastings, no rules, rules of Netflix, kind of a simple set of rules, to keep them thinking, when are we working at home? And why and when are we in the office? Why? And it’s worked really well for them, even within Bic. And so Bic is like now looking at it and saying, Okay, we don’t want to mess you guys up. How do we start kind of learning from you in a much bigger organization? Because some people can say, that’s them. They did it before. It’s easy. They’re small. It’s easy. I don’t think it is easy. I think it’s purposeful.
Sue Bethanis 28:49
I know, it’s not easy. You know, it’s intended, I call it an intention, intention. Yeah, exactly. No, I think that’s great. So what? So we kind of throw these things around, in a way? And I think that people do think it’s easy, but I don’t I don’t really think it is. And so what are some of the questions, so you kind of rattle them off a little bit there. But what are some of the questions that pick? Well, the Rocketbook, actually in this case was we’re asking like, I want our audience to hear some of these questions because I think that that’s what is making this intentional. It’s like, it’s not just ‘okay, well, we’re coming in on Wednesdays. Everybody needs to come on Wednesdays.’ So they have guardrails? It’s like but no, no, but what are you doing on Wednesdays? Yeah, like in this one case, we know of a client is doing not Taco Tuesdays, but I’m not Taco Thursdays. They’re calling it something. Yeah. Yeah, I’m trying to think I’m spacing on what they use and what they call it on Thursday, it doesn’t matter. It’s a three-hour time set from two to five. So the first hour, they have specific celebrations, the second hour, some you know, some form of celebration, some form of performance and learning that they that they’re celebrating and then the second hour is some sort of topic that they facilitate somebody they rotate facilitation, so that someone’s bringing in some sort of topic that they maybe have read an article, or maybe they’re given a lecture or whatever they’re doing. And then the third hour is happy hour. It’s like, and each week they’re doing this. And they’re like making it’s very intentional, but it’s different every week. And it involves everybody because somebody new gets to facilities time. So that’s super intentional. It’s a great example. Yeah. And it’s not on me. We’re trying to, like get these from our clients, because another client told me today, why don’t you get a bunch of clients together? So they can talk about I said, Well, yeah, great idea. You know, because we got to make this up. And we have to know that we have to it has to be intentional. So I’m just wondering, there are other questions that so one of the questions would be, what is the time period that you’re going to require people to come so right, so let’s say okay, we want to do one day a week. Great. So what day is that? Alright, so now one question is, what are you going to people? What are people going to do? Because if you don’t do that, they’re all going to be on their laptops on Zoom.
Marianne Lewis 30:59
Yeah, exactly what happened? Right, and then you get the people saying, Why am I in the office? I’m on my laptop from zoom. No, right. Totally agree. So the morning? Yeah. So I think there were a couple of pieces that I heard that I thought they build from that great example you just shared. So, when it came to, especially the homework, their question was when are you at your best doing deep work? Right? Remember, these are designers, and engineers, there are times they put their heads down. And what they did is they built kind of a sense of, so they know who their morning people are, they know who their night owls are, you’re allowed to set some personal rules of I’m not going to take meetings before nine or 10, because I am a night owl, right? And then you’d have the opposite. You’d have people that are super early morning people. And really, they turn off a bit in the afternoons, right? Or they try to, and they would find these sweet spots.
Sue Bethanis 31:53
So what are the sweet spots? Yeah, that’s one question.
Marianne Lewis 31:57
You’re allowed to use your Outlook to show your best times. So people know how to respect you and the work you’re doing. Right? They use Slack and all sorts of tech things. But they’re also very clear about when they turn off their notifications. That’s some of the kind of the rules about let’s support people’s deep work. Because it’s about what you get done, not about the hours. And we need to know how to best support, right? Because the expectation is you are going to perform at a very high level. And we’re going to help you do that. And then I think to your point when you were talking about kind of the why you come into the office, and when they do similar things. We know one of the reasons we want people to be a tight-knit, psychologically safe bonded team because it will make them better creatively. And in terms of a sense of belonging and retention. Right. So they know that. And then they start to think about I can’t remember what they call it, they have something like your Taco Tuesdays. Right? So there are some things that are very social, and they do everything from there in Boston, to go to a Red Sox game to go to karaoke, fun, fun stuff, so here’s why, you know, the CEOs, we’re gonna have a meeting with the CEOs, we’re gonna put a topic on the table. We need as many perspectives as possible
Sue Bethanis 33:16
We need everybody here.
Marianne Lewis 33:16
Let’s be there. And people are heard. And there’s a very direct interaction with the top team. And I think that’s really engaging. And you can see people call, they have free food. I mean, exactly what you said.
Sue Bethanis 33:31
Yeah, well, food is not the only thing that’s yeah, it has to have a purpose. Because I don’t think that free food is gonna get people in.
Marianne Lewis 33:36
No, but it’s all this. We respect your time. And we appreciate you being here. And we’re gonna make the most of it. Right.
Sue Bethanis 33:43
Yeah, I think I was talking to somebody yesterday who went to an interesting conference with rewired on climate change. And so we were talking to just talking about, we’d gotten subject of hybrid and how, you know, she seemed to think that people are going to come back and it’s going to be economic. And I said, Well, I don’t see people coming back. I said I think that nobody wants to commute. I think we learned we can be very productive at home. I said I think we could get one to two days out of people. Maybe I said if we’re going to do that, it has to be productive. It has to be intentional, it has to be purposeful, because otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense to come in and have up everybody be on the laptop. Now, not everybody’s gonna come in. So you’re gonna have to deal with the stragglers and deal with people that can’t come in for whatever reason, because they’ve left the premises, they’ve got kids that whatever the reason is, there’s a lot of reasons they’re not feeling well that day, but they can still work. So, you’re always gonna have some people on online but so this is great. So it does require paradoxal and both/and thinking in this because there are a lot of criteria to use. So let’s just take one more and then we can stop what are some other examples of where we can where leaders can use paradoxically?
Marianne Lewis 35:02
I’m thinking I’ll go to the one about women’s leadership. And I don’t think women by any stretch, it just happens to be one that we hear more with women leaders were in fact, myself included. I remember having a question are all Dean’s assholes? Sorry, excuse the language, right? Because I was like, Man, when I first my first dean role was in London, I was like, I have got to figure this out. Because I, I’m a really collaborative caring person, or at least I try to be in at the same time. Man, you’ve got to have some discipline, but I didn’t like the models I had seen. And not all, but just some. And I didn’t have a lot of women models. When I took the role. Only eight of the top 100 business schools were run by women. So really didn’t have a lot of examples. And this was a top 40 school. And I was like, Okay, how am I going to do this? But what I learned through lots of discussions with women leaders in business, let alone you know, now we have actually quite a few business schools led by women is this is about that, also that Yin and Yang is, you know, how do you bring your compassionate, authentic self to build a psychologically safe, trusting, caring environment, we expect high performance, there’s no reason for them to be opposites. But you do get into kind of almost that tough love, right? Paradoxical approach is actually, you know, the integration is really powerful. If you can have both my standards are high, I expect a lot. And by the way, I care about, you know, I think the world of you, and we got to make sure that you’re taking care of because we take care of each other. And how do you build this in a way that fits. But we’ve had, you know, women leaders for quite some time, you have that challenge of, I have to be so good at what I do that I’ve got to over emphasize the competence. And now I feel cold, right? And I feel Stroik or something else, or vice versa. I am the caring leader and now looked at as soft. So you hear this kind of tension sometimes, I think thankfully, I think we’re hearing less, at least among the juniors because they realize, you know, there was a time that we would look to the executive women and they had had to work so hard against those barriers. They were, in my view, especially as some of the months I met in London in the financial district, they were tough because they had had to be super tough to get there. And so they had I’m not saying this is 50/50, right, this is that classic. It could be 90/10. But the point is their kind of trying to figure out, it’s also context specific. Do I have someone walk into my office who really needs the shoulder? Be there, whatever it feels right for you, and for that matter. But there’s no reason why you can’t hold a high bar and a caring one at the same time. It’s about finding the right mix for you for the culture you’re trying to build. Personally, personally, I mean, I really did. I did like my own little personal research study. Clearly, you can be both. And you can work really well together. But it’s about finding a personal mix.
Sue Bethanis 38:13
Yeah, gotcha. That makes sense. So very last question. And then I just want to make sure people know a little bit how to get to ahold of you. So we’re going into, I don’t know, a very uncertain time, I think that there’s no question that COVID has put us into a twirl for sure. But a different kind of twirl than what we’re going to be going into now what we were in you know, I think, six months ago, things were seemingly pretty good. But the stock market has taken a total hit. Clearly, and I think, you know, there’s they’re starting to be some layoffs. And so I think we’re going into, a different kind of uncertainty. So is there a way that paradoxical slash both/and thinking, Is there a way that it can help? Does it help more in uncertain times?
Marianne Lewis 39:12
I think there are two parts to that one, Sue. I mean, so one, I would just note that it and I’ve been saying it for 25 years, is that we basically found there kind of three factors in our environment that intensify our experience of tensions: scarcity, plurality, which means varied stakeholders voting in different ways, and change. Right, so we’re literally in the perfect storm and it’s just going to get stormier. Yeah. The flip side the other piece to that I would say so, you know, we started I told you, we started really at the strategy level, thankfully, we have met some phenomenal kind of experimental psychologists, researchers. And so we built something called a paradox mindset tool that we have been we’ve now measured 1000s of people it’s in multiple languages, it’s been really cool to study. And what we found is that the higher the experience of tensions, the more a paradox mindset. What that means is I embrace tensions, I see them as opportunities, doesn’t mean I like them. It means I see potential in that I run toward them. And I think about how to navigate and right. What we found is the higher the tensions and the higher the paradox mindset, the more productive this is, according to all the supervisors, because we get that data to the more creative again, according to their supervisors. And according to the people, the respondents, the higher the well-being. Because in that sea of uncertainty and change, and scarcity, right, they feel that there’s some value. I mean, it’s not going to be easy, we’re going to have highs and lows. But I think what we were learning increasingly, is sometimes our hardest times are where we find our greatest strengths, we find new opportunities. We talked to a lot of people about kind of career changes over time, and to a one, they will almost always say it was in some moment of real challenge. That it, it pushed them to work through those tensions and find what’s next. What’s my ultimate strength? How do I play to these tensions in new ways? Again, I’m not saying it’s going to be fun, I think it’s going to be a rough economic ride. And cultural ride and polarization. I mean, we’ve talked a lot about different tensions. Yeah, there’s a lot of politics, there’s a lot of this, and it’s gonna be a big question is, are you going to be open to this? Because if you are going to hold so tight to one side, you know, it’s that classic, you know, you’re going to be battered? Versus are you going to serve through this or you’re going to find more creativity?
Sue Bethanis 41:48
I think that that’s a really important point that we can’t get stuck in one side. In fact, even using the word side itself, is problematic. I mean, we were we’re getting stuck in one way of thinking. And, you know, there’s no question that social media is contributing to this, because all it’s doing is like, basically giving you what you already know or think or feel. And it’s continuing to give you the same stuff to celebrate and reinforce think you reinforce what you already know, think and feel. Which is making it harder and harder and making it more dichotomous and making it more polarized. And it’s harder and harder to these haven’t even have a conversation with people because they’re so stuck. So being able to see the other person’s point of view and not even seeing the other side, but the other person’s point of view, another way
Marianne Lewis 42:49
With curiosity,
Sue Bethanis 42:50
With curiosity. You know, I had a wonderful client call this morning, and we had done our 360. And then we had said, you know, what are the things we want to what are the actions that happen, she wants to form? And so I said, you know, just start asking more questions. And I was, I wasn’t being casual, just like, you know, my answer for people who need to be more or be less bullying or less, not bullying. Alright, that’s not the right word. They need to be less intense and less advocating is to ask more questions to go into inquiry mode. And the people that are not speaking up enough, it’s the same thing going go into inquiry so that you can get your feet wet. And so I said, so the answer to both of these is to ask more questions, she does when you told me this, it seems so simple. I was like, okay, that’s what you got for me. So she was like, okay, yes, you’re getting your money’s worth. But she said, I have practiced it. And I can’t believe how much of a difference it makes, and how easy it has been, and how it opens up amazing doors and how provocative I’ve been able to be because they’re provocative questions, yet. They’re still questions. And but her vibe of mind is about curiosity. I mean, she couldn’t do that. If she wasn’t being super curious. And so I was just applauding her like going on ice and you’re doing so well. And this is such a tribute to you, because it’s about being curious and about being the enquirer and you, and that’s the only way that you’re gonna change. And the only way that the world is going to change, frankly.
Marianne Lewis 44:25
I mean, you know, I’m a big fan of Adam Grants work and I love his Think Again, which is really about. Yeah, Think Again, is his most recent book, okay. But it’s really about, you know, how do you approach things as a scientist, not a lawyer, not a judge, not a politician. And he kind of goes through these but the point of being of a scientist is to ask the questions, with a real curiosity of what’s going on here, like, now, you know, you’re in a political debate. Don’t debate. Help me, help me understand your experience. Is to this point where you are, I don’t want you to, you may not change my mind at all. But it sure would help me if I understood your own personal experiences to this point. Because you start to change the, you know, you change that question. And you’ve changed the dialogue. I don’t want you to convince me of anything. I just want to understand your, where you’re coming from. Right. It’s a very personal question now.
Sue Bethanis 45:26
It’s great. I really enjoyed our conversation. Really, so much. Yeah, and let me just give everyone some information. Your website is www.bothandthinking.net. You can find Marianne on Twitter @MarianneWLewis. And then the book, of course, is Both/And Thinking: Embracing Credit Tensions to Solve your Toughest Problems. You can get that on Amazon, of course. So, Marianne, thank you once again. Thank you. Vice versa. Yeah, have a wonderful rest of your evening. And let’s keep in touch.
Marianne Lewis 46:04
Absolutely. All the best. Thank you too.