Decision Making
Decision Making
Choosing A - AND - B options
We all face tensions and competing demands at work, it’s not IF we face tensions but HOW we face them. Career decision making doesn’t have to be A or B, you can choose A and B.
We tend to face tensions in an Either/Or approach to chose one, but this is a limited strategy. Wendy Smith, University of Delaware professor and researcher, and author of the book “Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems” explains that embracing competing demands simultaneously enables more creative and lasting solutions.
Both/And thinking is about paradoxes, situations that combine contradictory or opposing features or qualities such as stay-go, self-other, alone-together, efficiency vs. creativity, quality vs. quantity, cost vs. value, or addressing the social good vs. the bottom line.
Both/And thinking encourages us to seek connections between options A and B and opens us to be more creative, to find more valuable solutions. The invitation is to explore the underlying values for each choice. Why do you want to stay with the current job? What do you love about it (people, projects, stability)? What is it about the new job (novelty, adventure, learning, leadership opportunities)? Then, you can ask yourself, are there ways to accommodate what you value about staying and what you value about leaving? How could you stay but negotiate for more salary, more responsibility, or different projects?
In general, our education system has taught us to frame questions as “A or B?” The Either/Or decision making comes from a place of needing control to minimize uncertainty - often time is not about the decision but the need to feel in control. Scarcity, feeling that we don’t have enough also gets us into Either/Or thinking. Letting go of needing control and an experience of abundance guides us to an alternative, A and B, Both/And thinking.
When we change our mindset to think we can have both options, a whole new world of possibilities starts to emerge. However, this requires that we navigate our emotions and feel comfortable with paradoxes. Some days will be going in one directions, other days will be going in the opposite direction. Some days will leave work early to attend our children’s school events while other days we’ll work late and not feel guilty because we are not having dinner with the family.
The Both/And thinking requires certain strategies:
asking ‘How can I do both?' and finding a solution that integrates both A and B
dealing with emotions but not letting them take over our decision making; ‘find comfort in the discomfort’; asking others how they would think about your Both/And options
separating and connecting: analyzing how options A and B are different and how they are connected – finding synergies.
boundaries: being aware that A and B implementation is balanced, we are not going too far to A or to B
experimentation: being open to learning and to making more dynamic changes; accepting serendipity (unplanned events)
structure: recognizing that the decisions are embracing competing demands over time; sometimes we focus on A and at other times we shift to B, to integrate their synergy
The metaphors here are to create the ‘mule’ - an option that is stronger than the horse and faster than the donkey - a win, win; and to ‘walk the tightrope’, to look out to the future always balancing, doing micro-shifts right and left.
Approaching decision making in a Both/And thinking allows us to be engaged at work and in life; it can be challenging, uncertain and scary, yet also energizing and motivating but research shows that people perform their best, and are most innovative and satisfied with their work when they are in the engaging zone.
If you need help taking the next step in your career, I can assist you. Contact me and we can work together. Let’s get started!
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