Where do great things come from? Not good, but great.
One way of looking at this problem: great things manifest contradictory things at the same time and grow them.
That sounds confusing. What does it mean?
Consider a marketing campaign that tries to drive “leads” or new prospects towards a business. Typically, brands see diminishing returns on quality when growing lead volume:
- Their best prospects have already converted into leads.
- Other prospects are not as strong of fits for the business or product and are harder to convert.
- This problem compounds as the brand spends more and more on advertising and moves farther out on the diminishing returns curve.
But what if a bold leader sent out a directive that tasked a business with a) growing their overall leads count and b) improving the quality of those leads at the same time.
Uproar would ensue. Many would note that quantity and quality are opposites in this scenario. They cannot be scaled together. One must be given up in favor of the other. It’s not fair!
Here are some similar “contradictions” that, at first glance, seem impossible to embody together:
- Focus and expansion
- Instinct and rationality
- Confidence and flexibility
- Harmony and tension
- Ambition and reality
- Short-term iteration speed and building for the long term
The default instinct is to view these words as opposites. I can’t expand a business while keeping it focused. How am I supposed to rely more on instinct without giving up rational thinking?
But, if you observe the greats, they have a funny way of holding these contradictions together at once.
Think of the Apple examples in earlier chapters. Apple was able to bring together two “opposites” in their products, the technical and the personal.
It was the tension between these two conflicting ideas that carved out Apple’s niche. They were great by virtue of scaling contradictory ideas.
