These paradoxes are where you should begin building a flourishing, high-performance culture. We will examine how great leaders balance the big picture and current objectives, keep one eye on now and the other on later, create value-add communication, distribute power, and unleash passion throughout their organizations.

Broaden the Vision & Narrow the Focus

If we broaden the vision without narrowing the focus, we end up being all things to everyone and nothing to anyone. If we narrow the focus without broadening the vision, we end up executing perfectly against the wrong opponent. At either end of this paradox, organizational disaster lurks.

Organizations are often guilty of violating this paradox at both ends. An organization can have the worst of both worlds - a narrow vision and a broad focus, playing on too small a field with too many balls.

Live in the Present & Live in the Future

Organizations with big dreams and plans for the future, but without objectives and goals that allow short-term wins and critical cash flow, are not likely candidates for organizational old age.

Organizations with a focus on execution and meeting the next quarter’s expectations, but without a strong sense of the outline of the future and the demands it will make, are no more likely to make it to full maturity.

Communicate More & Filter Information

Leaders say “We need to communicate more.” But that’s worse than half an answer, because without boundaries, a lot of the additional communication will add to the sense of hopelessness. In fact, it is likely that people will freely share their garbage while fiercely protecting their gold. In a world of “communicate more,” the main thing people will do is make more group distributions and “reply all” responses, both to diffuse responsibility and to shred accountability.

Exercise Authority & Share Power

Power. It is exhilarating and frightening. Everyone seems to want more of it, but it frightens us when other people get it.

Powersharing, the paradoxical balancing of all available power in the organization - formal and informal, coercive and influential, overt and tacit - is the way to success.

Create Passion & Expect Passion

Passion is a fabulous force. If two organizations are on the same playing field with roughly the same size, talent, and strategy, the one that has passionate people will ultimately destroy the one that does not.

Passion is a fearsome force. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do organizations. In the absence of positive passion, negative passion will flood and poison the culture. One of the lessons of history is how astoundingly zealous human beings can be when they are bent on destruction.