The Role of Paradox in Business


The leaders who get the most out of this passage—the ones who not only excel as business heads but go on to become outstanding CEOs—adopt values and embrace a perspective that can seem antithetical to this position, at least at first glance. Valuing the unfamiliar, displaying a hang-in-there mentality, and accepting paradox may not be the first things that come to mind when you think of a business head, but these traits are exactly what helps these leaders learn and grow. Let’s look at each trait and why it is so important:

  • Value the unfamiliar. In teaching many GM programs, we counsel GMs that it is easy to become lulled at the top of an organization by the role and the perquisites that accompany it. Many new GMs have difficulty holding a balance between confidently challenging the system to change and staying humble and in a learning mode at the same time. Within the first six months on the job, you’ll discover that your knowledge and skills, no matter how great, are inadequate for the requirements of the job. The best GMs learn how to build great teams because they need great teams. It takes a group of diverse experts to run a business; no one person can possibly know enough. Rather than be intimidated by people who know more than you in a given area, recruit these people and empower them. They’re the ones who will save you. As long as you value their superior knowledge rather than feel threatened by it, you’ll be able to cope with tasks for which you aren’t prepared. Be aware that it often takes time and conscious effort to value the unfamiliar. Take time to reflect on whether you’re valuing it. Are you shutting people out from your team who know more than you do? Are you responding angrily when a savvy direct report suggests another way of doing things that goes against your traditional approach? Do you find yourself asking members of your team not to “show you up” in team meetings, when all they’re really doing is pointing out issues you couldn’t possibly know about?

  • Display a hang-in-there mentality. This is something different from either a conquering or defeatist mentality. The former mind-set creates unreal expectations; you’re not prepared to learn from the setbacks and obstacles that are part of the job. The latter mind-set is a common reaction to these setbacks and obstacles. When the job proves overwhelming and the decisions impossible, some people get down on themselves and shift into defeatist mode. “Hanging in” means having the courage to deal with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the job, even though it’s scary at times. It means having patience and trusting your instincts, even though the short-term results aren’t what you’d hoped for.

    We’re working with a top executive who is in the process of taking over a business from a highly successful general manager. Tim has been an enormously effective “product” person with this company; he is skilled at developing products and dealing with the financial side of the business, but he doesn’t have much experience with cultural or people issues. Initially, these issues have frustrated him. Tim is accustomed to having a boss to turn to when facing a major problem, and now he has no one. The ambiguity surrounding some of the people decisions he’s facing—who to select for his team, how to deal with “solid citizens” who have made a major contribution to the business but are not high-performers—is especially difficult for him to handle. He is struggling with the inherent conflicts of potential decisions. If he terminates the good performer in order to upgrade his team, how does he mitigate the impact on the motivated culture he wants to establish? Tim told us he never realized that he would be grappling with so many difficult questions without easy answers.

    There is no magic solution for Tim except to display the fortitude to get through this rough passage and the energy to keep working hard, despite the difficulties he encounters. He also needs to develop his own theory of how the business should be run, believe in that theory, and use it, along with his instincts, to make decisions.

  • Accept the paradoxical nature of work. Paradoxes occur with increasing frequency at every managerial level, but they’re especially acute when you run a business. A paradox is a situation in which a decision is required and two equally appealing alternatives with equally negative factors present themselves. Common paradoxes in running a business include “short term versus long term,” “centralization versus decentralization,” “standardization versus innovation”; most cannot be solved, only managed, and GMs must learn to behave paradoxically. For example, business heads need to move fast and have patience. In other managerial jobs, moving fast generally takes priority over patience. Here, though, people need to be aware of the implications of their actions. For instance, as Tim is learning, there are times when it’s unwise to act on the impulse to fire someone because of how that action will affect the entire organization; a business head’s actions are magnified by the position, and even though getting rid of someone may be the right thing to do in one sense, it’s the wrong thing to do from an organizational perspective. Learning when to move fast and when to have patience, therefore, is a skill all business heads need to master.

Finally, there’s the paradox of values and results. As we’ve discussed, P&L responsibility drives GMs to focus on results, but they need to learn to balance values with this drive. One of the most difficult decisions a GM has to make is sacrificing short-term gains in order to maintain a cultural belief or norm. For instance, a business experiences pricing pressure and begins to lose margin and profitability. The GM has to decide where to rein in costs. One alternative is increasing employee co-pay on health costs. For example, the business may have paid 80 percent of the costs for employees and emphasizes this as a perk—part of the “great place to work” atmosphere in which it takes great pride. The business head knows that passing more of the cost of health care on to employees is the right thing to do from one perspective—it will help avert downsizing—but that it violates a cultural tenet.

Learning to function effectively amidst these types of paradoxes is crucial, and this is the passage where this learning should take hold. Too many business heads, however, feel more comfortable solving problems than managing paradoxes. They like to see problems crossed off their “to do” list. They prefer black-and-white choices—always opting for results over values, always moving fast, and always acting with confidence. Here and on higher leadership levels, the best executives find a way to manage paradox, making decisions situationally and reflectively rather than uniformly and reactively. And in so doing, they reinforce an authenticity in their leadership style that will serve them well.




Leadership Passages. The Personal and Professional Transitions That Make or Break a Leader
Leadership Passages: The Personal and Professional Transitions That Make or Break a Leader (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership)
ISBN: 0787974277
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 121

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