Choices
For those who have read Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”, the word “orcs” is a familiar term. They were the bad-looking, goblin-like scary warriors of the dark forces. As Wikipedia puts it, “Orcs are a brutish, aggressive, ugly and malevolent race of monsters, contrasting with the benevolent Elves and serving an evil power.”
I chose the word ORC to mean “OR Conundrum” – more like an AND/OR conundrum. As a business leader, my day is about meetings and choices I have to constantly make. Some decisions are trivial, while others are critical; some are inconsequential and reversible, a few are not. In most cases, the leader does not have a map but a compass, and thus the series of paths taken (or not taken) determine the final destination. Success or failure is an outcome of the choices one makes.
Growth or profitability? Emerging markets or Developed markets? Organic growth or acquisitions? Short-term or long-term? Hunting or farming? Best Customers or Rest Customers? Depth or breadth? Do inhouse or outsource? Replace or retrain? Office or hybrid? Pipeline or PO (purchase orders)? MQLs or SQLs? Discount or full-price? Private or public? Centralise or delegate? Hire or reject? Product or service? Family or professional? Point solution or full-stack? Branding or performance? Stay or sell? PE or IPO? Work or family? And so they go on – the OR Conundrums. ORCs. They are the make or break of a business.
Jim Collins wrote about OR in his book, “Built to Last”: “Instead of being oppressed by the “Tyranny of the OR,” highly visionary companies liberate themselves with the “Genius of the AND”—the ability to embrace both extremes of a number of dimensions at the same time. Instead of choosing between A OR B, they figure out a way to have both A AND B.” He added:
We’re not talking about mere balance here. “Balance” implies going to the midpoint, fifty-fifty, half and half. A visionary company doesn’t seek balance between short-term and long-term, for example. It seeks to do very well in the short-term and very well in the long-term. A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between idealism and profitability; it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable. A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between preserving a tightly held core ideology and stimulating vigorous change and movement; it does both to an extreme. In short, a highly visionary company doesn’t want to blend yin and yang into a gray, indistinguishable circle that is neither highly yin nor highly yang; it aims to be distinctly yin and distinctly yang—both at the same time, all the time.
Irrational? Perhaps. Rare? Yes. Difficult? Absolutely. But as F. Scott Fitzgerald pointed out, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” This is exactly what the visionary companies are able to do.
Jim Collins calls upon leaders to reject the “Tyranny of the OR” and embrace the “Genius of the AND”. He writes: “Builders of greatness … embrace both extremes across a number of dimensions at the same time—purpose AND profit, continuity AND change, freedom AND responsibility, discipline AND creativity, humility AND will, empirical analysis AND decisive action, etc.”
As leaders, AND is the preferred choice – have the cake and eat it too. It can work for the big picture, but daily decisions are about trade-offs. And that is where the OR Conundrum needs to be faced and addressed – in business, with family, and with oneself.
In this series, I will focus on the ORCs faced by marketers.
