The hardest decisions rarely present one good option and one bad one. They ask us to choose between two commitments we have reasons to protect.

Growth and stability. Current performance and future capacity. The work that built your career and the work pulling you toward what comes next.

Both/and thinking helps leaders stay with that tension long enough to see more than a forced binary. But seeing the whole problem does not allocate time, move money, or clear a calendar. One priority eventually receives the primary claim.

What both/and thinking gets right

Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis have spent years studying how people and organizations respond to persistent contradictions. Their both/and approach starts with a practical premise: some tensions cannot be solved once and removed from the agenda. The two sides remain connected.

A business needs today’s performance and tomorrow’s capacity. A leader needs confidence and humility. A team needs enough psychological safety to speak candidly and enough pressure to produce strong work.

A paradox mindset is the ability to accept those competing demands and draw energy from working through them. The original research linked that mindset with stronger performance and innovation when people faced limited time and funding.

Its value shows up under constraint. Instead of rushing toward an either/or answer, leaders can ask how the two demands affect each other, what each contributes, and whether the relationship can be redesigned.

The trouble begins when both/and becomes a reason to leave every option open. Every initiative stays active. Every stakeholder keeps a place in the plan. The team agrees that several priorities deserve attention, yet no one decides what receives time first.

Both/and thinking improves the view of the problem. It still leaves leaders responsible for a choice.

When the old work owns the system

Jonathan Courtney’s recent career change makes that distinction tangible. Courtney spent 16 years building AJ&Smart, the Berlin-based design and facilitation company associated with Design Sprints, workshops, and Facilitator.com. He had built a successful company, a capable team, and an audience interested in his work.

He also kept returning to music, film, games, and writing. He tried to create alongside the business. Fridays were reserved. Game jams were booked. Recording software was downloaded. Then the workday arrived, an AJ&Smart email needed attention, and the familiar work took over.

The business already knew how to command his day. It brought customers, deadlines, income, recognition, and a clear next action. Creative work offered a blank screen and no proof that anyone would care.

In September 2026, Courtney handed the company to his team and stepped away from daily operations to pursue music. Three weeks later, he spoke with Alen Faljic about the decision. The full interview is compelling because he is still inside the transition, speaking openly about excitement, money, status, identity, and the fear that the music may not be good enough.

His experience carries a familiar organizational lesson. A new priority enters the plan, but the old work still owns the meetings, budget, deadlines, and rewards. The new work is expected to survive on whatever attention remains.

Research on overload in knowledge work connects excessive work in progress with lower creativity, weaker productivity, missed deadlines, and burnout. Adding another priority to a crowded system can create more activity without changing what the organization delivers.

Courtney described his own constraint directly: “I cannot have two main projects going on in my life.” He was not offering a rule for everyone. He was naming the condition he had avoided for years.

The both/and inside his choice

Courtney made an either/or decision about his role. He left the CEO position and gave music his time. Yet he did not leave 16 years of entrepreneurial experience behind.

He brought the builder with him. He wants to release work quickly, listen for a response, improve the product, reach an audience, and learn how to promote it. The role changed, while the habits and capabilities built through the company moved into a new setting.

That is a stronger use of both/and thinking. Two roles do not need equal space on the calendar to remain part of the same person. A transition can preserve the parts of an earlier identity that still serve the work ahead.

The decision created enough distance to discover what belonged to the CEO role and what belonged to Courtney himself.

Both/and still needs sacrifice

Courtney’s story connects directly with the PRESSURE Model, Double Loop Performance’s framework for moving a difficult issue from problem framing to action.

Problem and Reflect help a team name the tension without flattening it. Evaluate and Strategize test the options. Then comes Sacrifices, the phase that asks what the decision will cost and what must change for the chosen direction to receive a fair chance.

For Courtney, the sacrifice included the daily role, predictable cash flow, familiar status, and the stream of work that confirmed his competence. In return, music gained protected time, public commitments, feedback, and deadlines.

Leadership teams face the same test in less dramatic forms. They approve a strategy, then protect every project that came before it. The new work enters the portfolio while the old work keeps its people, budget, and meeting time. Execution slows because the stated priority is still competing with the system it was supposed to change.

The Sacrifices phase turns preference into a resource decision. It asks:

• Which priority receives protected time now?
• What will stop, shrink, transfer, or wait?
• Which capabilities from the current system should move into the next one?
• What evidence will tell us whether the choice is working?

Both/and thinking keeps the team from simplifying the tension too soon. Sacrifice determines how people, money, and attention will move.

Three practices leaders can use

Turn “next year” into evidence

Courtney argues that urgency separates people who pursue a change from people who keep talking about it. His explanation cannot account for every constraint. Health, caregiving, debt, family risk, and financial support all shape what a person can do.

His provocation still exposes a common habit: “next year” can protect an ambition from contact with reality. The person keeps the possibility without facing the audience, customer, or chance of disappointment.

A better question is: What evidence will exist in 90 days that does not exist today? The answer might be a prototype, three customer conversations, a public performance, or a protected experiment with a firm review date. Urgency earns its place when it produces evidence.

Sequence feedback

Courtney shares unfinished music quickly, but he chooses the early listeners carefully. He is not asking them for a comprehensive critique. He is looking for signs of energy and enough encouragement to keep developing the work.

Early ideas need room to form. Later, they need harder questions, disagreement, and exposure to the people who will judge the result. Psychological safety gets the rough idea into the room; clear standards help the team decide what deserves further investment.

Commit seriously without pretending permanence

Courtney is treating music as a career. He also acknowledges that he may eventually move toward writing or film. That does not weaken the commitment. It gives one direction enough attention to produce real evidence before the next decision.

Leaders can do the same. A choice can be explicit, funded, and time-bound without being irreversible. Set the review point in advance, then judge the decision against what the work has taught you.

What Double Loop brings to the decision

Complex choices often stall before the team reaches the real disagreement. People debate solutions while holding different views of the problem, protect projects they helped create, or avoid naming the trade-offs that could disappoint a colleague or sponsor.

Double Loop Performance uses PRESSURE to slow down the early framing and make the later choice more specific. The work is to surface competing truths, test assumptions, decide what leads now, and document the sacrifices, ownership, and evidence that will guide execution.

That process protects both sides of a tension from being dismissed. It also keeps both/and language from becoming cover for an overloaded portfolio.

The choice has to change the system

Courtney did not erase the company years. He carried their skills, discipline, and experience into the next chapter. What he stopped doing was asking music to compete for the leftovers of a life organized around AJ&Smart.

Leaders face the same choice whenever they introduce a new priority into a full system. If the decision does not change calendars, budgets, ownership, or expectations, the old work will continue to win.

Both/and thinking helps leaders see the full tension. Sacrifice gives the choice enough weight to alter what happens next.

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