A second insight we’ve included in our most recent work is expanding managing polarities to leveraging polarities. Leveraging opens the door to exploring how we can gain maximum positive impact by understanding and being able to tap the energy and power of polarities in any situation.

A third advance is simplifying what had been a six step process of managing polarities into three:

• Seeing polarities: Recognizing when one or more are significantly impacting the work you’re doing.

• Mapping polarities: Identifying the “upsides” and “downsides” of each pole, what you will achieve by leveraging it well, what will happen if you leverage it poorly.

• Tapping the Power of Polarities: Taking what you’ve learned about how to leverage one well and are putting it into practice in your daily work with desired results.

The Polarity Assessment is a step-by-step guide to “Seeing,” “Mapping” and “Tapping” the energy in key polarities for your organizations.  It includes a web-based program that enables you to assess how well you are leveraging these polarities — whether you want to engage 10 people or 10,000.

Should you or your team/organization promote continuity or pursue change?

Should we centralize or decentralize?

Is it more important to lower costs or improve quality?

Is it better to lead in a directive or participatory way?

Which best supports high-performance in today’s business environment, structure or flexibility?

These are only a few of many interdependent value “polarities” experiened by leaders, teams, and organizations. The research is clear that the most successful leaders, teams, and organizations do “both” one “and” the other well — and outperform those who don’t.

In his book “Good to Great” Jim Collins describes “The Genius of the ‘AND.’” We need to be responsive AND proactive, directive AND participatory, etc. Often, problem-solving and improvement efforts focus on either one important value or the other, which results in “fixes that fail” and feeling like you’ve been in “ditch-to-ditch driving” oscillations. Collins refers to this experience as, “The Tyranny of the ‘Or.’” We EITHER plan for stability at the expense of change OR we opt for change and let people hang on for dear life. We EITHER centralize for efficiency OR decentralize for speed. In the Tyranny of OR, we lose the benefits of the unchosen value and end up with the the unintended consequences that result from overemphasizing the chosen value –anytime, everytime! Implicitly and intuitively, many of us know “both/and” and practice it, more or less well. When we do, we achieve something better than balance; we achieve dynamic balance that is both generative and sustainable.

What’s needed to dynamically address the complexity and change we experience today is a tool and process to make the implicit and intuitive wisdom of “both/and” explicit, practical, and applicable.

Polarity Management, developed by Dr. Barry Johnson, is a tool and process to accomplish this goal. Tapping the power of polarities helps leaders, teams, and organizations see and make the important distinction between solvable problems where “either/or” solutions work well and unsolvable interdependent value polarities where “both/and” thinking is required. Tapping polarities enables generative and sustainable high performance.

There is athree-step process to help individuals, teams and organizations learn how to identify and tap polarities:

1. See IT. Helps you or your team/organization see a clear picture of what is happening with your values and key value polarities so you can move forward with confidence and clarity.
2. Map & Tap IT. Builds on the See IT process to Map and Tap IT through identification of Action Steps and Early Warning Signs. Action Steps set a clear course for what to do, and how to do it. Early Warnings will tell you when things are going off track – before they happen!
3. Track IT. Provides support through the learning curve and integration/application of new skills and behaviors.

Working with leaders through coaching to polarities or working with teams and the organization to identify and tap key polarities:

• Gets individuals and teams “unstuck”
• Reduces unproductive conflict
• Increases the speed, attainability, and sustainability of change efforts
• Supports cross-cultural and diversity/inclusion efforts
• Generates creative approaches to address chronic issues
• Helps indivdiuals, teams, and organizations see the forest and the trees

Experience the Power of Achieving Generative and Sustainable High-performance Results
See IT, Map IT, Tap IT, Track IT

3 Steps to Xperience ® IT:

1) See IT. Helps you see a clear picture of one or several issues so you can move forward with confidence and clarity;
2) Map & Tap IT. Builds on the See IT process to Map Action Steps and to set a clear course for what to do, how to do it, and identify Early Warning Signs that will tell you when things go off track – before it happens; and,
3) Track IT. Builds on the See, Map, and Tap to Track Action Steps and Early Warnings over time and provide support through the learning curve and integration/application of new skills and behaviors.

See IT, Map IT, Tap IT, Track IT — Xperience IT!

We all:

• Have stories – our unique experiences;
• Experience getting stuck and hold the key to getting unstuck;
• Have the shared experience of the limited resource of time and the abundant resource of choices;  and,
• Have, if we’re lucky, future experience/s waiting to be created – our future story waiting to be told.

What’s your story? What’s the best of it you want to keep? What does your hoped-for-future look like? What’s in your way? Why is it in your way? What’s the sustainable path you’ll choose to get you to your preferred future?

Go from polarization to PolarOPTIMIZATION!