Handling Contradictions: The Structural Work of Leadership

All companies have to cope with inherent contradictions, to which people are naturally averse. There are several dimensions of contradictions: short versus long term (time horizons), local/competitive versus collective/cooperative, and, the biggest one, exploration versus exploitation. Managing these is key to ensuring adaptive firm performance. Contradictions can be resolved through backstage leadership in a way that creates an ideal equilibrium given firm peculiarities. There is no single “ideal balance” but each leader must discover that knife-edge. This is done both internally and externally, developing the mind-set and skills of an ambidextrous leader on the one hand, and coordinating team behavior and structural work on the other.