Workplace Multiplier by Tola Akinsulire

Tuesday Edition: January 21, 2025

Welcome to the Workplace Multiplier newsletter. Published every Tuesday & Friday, we discover something crucial to help us on the way to winning at work and in life.

During January, I'll be writing on key areas you should focus on to make 2025 a great year for your career and life.

The Hidden Trap That Might be Killing Your Best Decisions at Work

The December Dilemma

During the December period, members of the sales & marketing team were pushing me for approval for a discount promotion on some of our products.

Whilst I understood the reason for this as driving momentum for the products, I am also aware of the concerns by the financial side of the business on such a promotion. They did not want it.

Their reason was simple. These were products with a long period to deliver. You sign a contract today but you could have up to 12 months to complete the delivery. At a time when prices of things were moving up so fast, you could end up with a discount price product that you have to deliver at a higher cost of production.

The normal position is to say "Yes" to either position. I said "Yes" to both.

How? Well, I proposed a December discount promotion for a limited number of units. The number was small enough for the financial side of the business not to feel burdened too much future risk but interesting enough for the sales & marketing team to believe it would drive momentum with their clients.

Understanding Integrative Thinking

This sort of approach is known as Integrative Thinking. It's not original to me. I first heard of it from Roger Martin. He is a smart one. In 2017, Thinkers50 ranked him the number one management thinker in the world.

Integrative thinking is the ability and tendency for someone when faced with an either-or choice to come up with a new solution that incorporates elements of each but is superior to both.

The Linear Thinking Trap 

Sounds simple right? The problem is most of us have been used to Linear thinking. In today's interconnected world, linear thinking is a luxury we can no longer afford.

Every decision you make creates ripples that have multiple impacts. The blind spots of traditional linear thinking often lead us to:

• Focus on short-term gains while ignoring long-term implications
• Overlook crucial interdependencies between different parts of the organization
• Miss opportunities that exist at the intersection of different perspectives
• Create solutions that solve one problem while spawning three new ones

It's like trying to solve a Rubik's cube by only looking at one side. You might get the colours aligned on that face, but the rest of the cube becomes a mess.

The Power of Integration

Integrated thinking isn't just about considering multiple factors – it's about understanding how they interact and influence each other. It's about seeing patterns, connections, and relationships that others miss.

Building an Integrative Thinking Mindset

Ready to build an Integrative Thinking Mindset? Let me share a few thoughts on how you develop this crucial capability:

1. Map Your Ecosystem: Start seeing your organization as an interconnected web. Every decision, every change, and every initiative affects multiple stakeholders and outcomes.
2. Embrace Complexity: Stop looking for simple, linear solutions to complex problems. Learn to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously.
3. Think in Systems: Consider both immediate impacts and second-order effects. Ask yourself: "And then what happens?"
4. Connect the Dots: Look for relationships between seemingly unrelated elements. Often, the most powerful insights lie in unexpected connections.

The Integration Advantage

When you think integrative, you:

• Make more robust decisions that consider multiple impacts and outcomes
• Identify opportunities others miss
• Create more sustainable solutions
• Build stronger stakeholder relationships
• Drive meaningful innovation

Breaking Free from Linear Thinking

Here's your challenge: The next time you face a decision, resist the urge to rush to the obvious solution. Instead:

1. Map the Stakeholders: Who will be affected? How will they react? What are their needs and concerns?
2. Consider Multiple Capitals: How will this impact your financial, human, social, and intellectual capital?
3. Think Long-term: What are the implications over different time horizons? What might change in the future?
4. Look for Connections: How do different aspects of the situation influence each other? Where are the feedback loops?

A Real-World Example: The P&G Story 

For the first time in 160-odd years, Procter & Gamble fired its CEO, Durk Jager, in 2000. OK, it is reported that he resigned. That's a more face-saving headline.

He had tippled the spending on R&D which had tanked P&G's earnings because they were not getting immediate results from that to justify the spending. As you can expect Wall Street was mad.

But there was logic to it. He saw that they were losing ground as a result of fading differentiation in their products and the ones by the competition. So, he knew they had to raise their Research & Development game.

The new CEO, A.G. Lafley, faced a choice – "Do I take innovation spending down to satisfy Wall Street and bring profitability up or do I keep it up and hope for it to produce great results in the future, leaving Wall Street mad at me as a brand-new CEO?"

Neither option solved the problem.

He started with the main problem – lack of innovation. He redefined innovation into two components – invention & commercialization. He figured that smaller companies had a better advantage over P&G when it came to invention. Two kids working in a garage can develop a new idea faster than a big tech company. But commercialization is where they have the edge.

He decided that they should source about 50% of their inventions from the outside and increase their product pipeline by taking these inventions through their commercialization infrastructure. The program was called "Connect and Develop". Through it, they got more innovations at a lower cost and at a faster turnaround time.

Your Call to Action

Start today:

• Question your assumptions about cause and effect
• Look for connections others might miss
• Consider impacts across different time horizons
• Engage diverse perspectives to enrich your understanding

In a world of increasing complexity, integrated thinking isn't just an advantage – it's a necessity.

The next time you're faced with a decision, pause and ask yourself: "Am I seeing the whole picture or just the part that's easiest to measure?"

Your success might depend on the answer.

Keep winning at work at work and in life.

Tola Akinsulire

I am a Workplace Multiplier

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