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Ink: Comfort in Discomfort

The Excerpt
The past or the future. Personal gain or the greater good. Consistency or change. In their new book, Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, co-authors Wendy Smith (PhDOB 2006) and Marianne Lewis point out that paradoxes such as these exist around every corner, especially once you start looking for them. Too often leaders get stuck in the balance between option A or B, trapped by the trade-offs inherent in either/or thinking. A both/and approach to problem-solving, by contrast, can help us shift from a mindset of constraint to one of creativity and flexibility, sparking innovation. The book is based on 25 years of research. (Smith began hers at HBS and is now a professor of management at the University of Delaware’s Lerner College of Business and Economics; Lewis is a dean and professor at the University of Cincinnati’s Lindner College of Business.) The mindset is equally useful in navigating business leadership, a career, or today’s climate of political polarization, the authors write. In the excerpt below, they explain how it’s increasingly possible—and even beneficial—to see the paradoxes as an opportunity and not be paralyzed by them.
Organizational leaders are also using both/and language to communicate their organizations’ goals and missions. Barclays unveiled a campaign it called AND—stressing that the 300-plus-year-old bank would only survive the next century by being relevant to shareholders and stakeholders and by making sure that it focused on markets and mission. The [now-former] CEO of Starbucks recently responded to a question about whether the company was trying to offer customers a convenient, quick cup of coffee or build a space for gathering community. He explained, “But we don’t believe there needs to be this type of a trade-off....[O]ur third place can and will continue to unite both experiences.” Yale University’s marketing campaign also adopted such language: “Yale University is best defined by the word AND,” explained one brochure. The university described an approach to education that is both big and small, inside and outside the classroom, advancing diversity and community. More recently, political staffer Huma Abedin titled her memoir about living across disparate worlds Both/And. Look around. Examples abound.
Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems,
by Wendy Smith (PhDOB 2006)
and Marianne Lewis
Required Reading
We asked alumni to tell us about their hands-down favorite book, the one title that they have most often recommended—to any reader, for any reason—over the last decade. (Sometimes it’s impossible to choose just one.) Here are their must-read recommendations for your consideration.

That’s easy: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. Rob Biederman (MBA 2014) told me about this book while we were chatting on a ski lift.

There are so many. I highly recommend Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us, by Brian Klaas, and Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, by Kim Scott (MBA 1996).

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol Dweck, should be assigned in every school. How we frame the world makes all the difference in what we are each capable of. And by default, many of us approach it with a fixed perspective that limits us in endless ways. Breaking that [habit] changes our ability to achieve what matters most to each of us.
—August Bradley Cenname (MBA 1997)

That’s an easy cold call. The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, by HBS professor Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. It’s an elegant and evidence-based look at how to lead people for both creativity and productivity.

These books, in no particular order, are all about survival, growth, or the downfall of enterprise: How the Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In, by Jim Collins; A Good African Story: How a Small Company Built a Global Coffee Brand, by Andrew Rugasira; Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company, by Andrew Grove; Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, by Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang; Double Your Money: Reflections on the Life of a Ugandan Agro Businessman, by Aga Sekalala; and Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, by John Sculley with John Byrne.
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