I recently had the pleasure of listening to Dave Wennergren, one of the more thoughtful Government IT and Management leaders, discuss the areas he was focuse on in his current job as the Assistant Deputy Chief Management Officer for DoD.
There was one particular anecdote that Dave told that I thought was in particular worth repeating – just so I am not misinterpreted, this was just one of many.
He noted that most people that are successful became that way by being very good at problem solving. Thus most issues that come up are looked at as problems to be dealt with and the right answer discovered and acted upon.
In reality, however, much of the challenges we face are in fact dualities that need management.
For example, Dave pointed out, consider inhaling and exhaling, functions of the body that serve to a large extent different purposes. It would be unwise to only optimize one of them to the exclusion of the other. The result would not be positive.