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People often experience dilemmas as a forced choice – they must choose one goal or the other, as if they are polar opposites.

Yet, we believe that maximum organizational performance is created when dilemmas are considered a single focus, rather than separate goals. Since both sides of a dilemma are valuable and necessary, we don’t want to sacrifice one for the other. (What company can continuously avoid longer-term investments to secure short-term profits? Or visa-versa?).

This thought is shown in the graphic to the right. When the situation is characterized along a line, we think in polarities and opposites. When we put the axes at right angles, we see the possibility of pursuing both goals by managing the dilemma

This diagram introduces the importance of boundaries on the lower end of the scale for each of the goals. This is the minimum boundary below which the organization will suffer serious damage is it presists in this state.

The goal is clearly AB!! -- the upper right hand corner where we have, for example, low costs AND high quality.

This diagram suggest that under stress we will tend to move in a direction that undermines our ability to manage dilemmas - toward hierarchy, linear thinking, goal driven behavior and competition.

Note well: we are only saying that this movement reduces our ability to manage our dilemmas. Many situations are NOT dilemmas.

And it sharpens our awareness to identify those situations better managed as dilemmas.