It’s hard to sustain the top management balancing act. The ability to achieve and maintain the balance between opposing tensions is a critical skill for top managers. We discuss the balancing role, the challenge of identifying and developing this skill, and some ideas about finding balance.

1. the clarion group
REAL. CLEAR. INSIGHT.
the clarion call
Balancing Tensions
at the Top

2. Charles Andrew and the
Partners of The Clarion Group
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The Issue
Do you ever feel that work is like walking a tightrope? While juggling multiple
tasks? Then you’ll relate to the executive on the cover.
It is hard to do the balancing act that top management requires. Picture yourself
on the business tightrope. You are suspended between the past and the future.
In order to maintain your balance in the present, you must keep moving. And you
must do that by deciding, over and over, when to lean toward the activity on
your left or the one on your right. Off either side is a long fall – the fate of any
executive who fails to find the balance between, say, creative strategic decisions
and flawless day-to-day execution.
The ability to achieve and maintain balance between the opposing tensions is a
critical skill for all top-level managers. Read on for a discussion of the balancing
role of the ambidextrous executives, three brief examples, and the challenge of
identifying and developing executives with ambidextrous skills.
Page 2

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Top Execs Must Be Ambidextrous
Questions like those on the left challenge C-level executives in virtually every
organization. We’re often brought in to help CEOs and their teams wrestle with
such issues. In working with them, we have seen that a substantial challenge for
all corporate leaders is finding the appropriate balance between seemingly
opposing options.
C-level challenges are complex. It’s rarely a simple matter of choosing one
alternative or the other, for example, centralize or decentralize, focus short term
or focus long term. In today’s increasingly competitive environment, top
executives must constantly find the dynamic balance point where they can
manage both alternatives.
One CEO with whom we work embraces these dynamics as opposing tensions
that co-exist and must be managed to achieve and maintain effective balance
for an organization. We agree – successful executives must be ambidextrous. For
example, they have to be strategic with one hand while maintaining strong
execution standards and consistent follow-through with the other hand. And this
challenge goes beyond corporate boundaries: Senior executives must also
demonstrate their ambidexterity externally – to analysts, customers, shareholders,
and board members. Most key leaders must continually assure Wall Street that
the firm will meet its immediate earnings targets, while at the same time instilling
confidence that the organization is growing and can sustain its growth.
Let’s focus the spotlight on a few organizations that have dealt with balance and
tension issues.
Page 3
Are we shooting
ourselves in the foot by
operating too short
term?
Are we so focused on
big ideas and new
markets that we’re not
getting the basics right?
Should we be more
centralized or more
decentralized?
How do I manage the
tension between
being strategic and
operational?

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 2013 the Clarion Group, Ltd. All rights reserved.Page 4
In Ring One
New Growth or Old Growth
In order to sustain growth, a CEO realized
he needed to nurture a continuous
pipeline of business-building initiatives.
The company needed to have new
growth engines ready when existing ones
began to falter. And the pace of
replenishment had to be faster than the
pace of decline.
Unfortunately, his management team
believed that their success depended on
excellent governance of existing
businesses. The CEO knew he had to get
his group of top executives to focus their
attention more on where they were
headed and less on where they were.
The CEO realized he needed to do two
things:
1) identify those who could manage that
ambidextrous challenge, and
2) quickly identify those on his leadership
team who couldn’t contribute
creatively to the future while at the
same time managing the day-to-day.
As a result, he put those who were ready
in roles managing multiple horizons
immediately. He put those with potential
in roles where they would support the
management of multiple horizons and
also individually develop ambidexterity as
a core competence.
In Ring Two
My Goals or Our Goals
One organization’s CEO, COO, and CFO
wanted help aligning around strategy. They
knew that they had talented people who
were working hard, but the organization was
not making the headway that it should.
They came to see that they had been
spending their time in separate functional
foxholes. They realized that their foxhole
mentality had them in a downward spiral.
They were all excellent operational
managers, very busy, and very proud of
their results. Unfortunately, no one identified
early on that their goals were not aligned,
and so they were pulling against each
other.
This surprisingly common circumstance
causes confusion at all levels of the
organization. The confusion then creates
operational fires that burn up the leadership
team’s time and leave no time to figure out
what is causing the confusion.
As a result of working this issue together, the
leadership team agreed to slow down to
spend time thinking, talking, and aligning
around strategy. Ironically, once they
slowed down, they were able to operate
faster. Their efforts were more productive,
more effective, and more efficient. As trust
grew, they became less protective of
departmental turf and more cooperative
with each other.
In Ring Three
To Centralize or Decentralize
One company struggled with its
organizational design and decision-
making authority. The CEO would
delegate fully to the business units
(decentralizing) so that she could
concentrate on strategic issues. She
would focus on those issues and do that
well, but then she’d fume when the units
didn’t meet their goals. To fix the
problem, she would start to micromanage
the units (now centralizing) while
neglecting strategic challenges that were
going to have a substantial impact on the
future of the business.
In a series of meetings and discussions, the
CEO learned how to stay in a more
balanced place – she now leans toward
decentralization or centralization as the
situation demands, but she doesn’t go to
the extremes that caused confusion and
dysfunction.
This CEO learned to be ambidextrous, to
move on that gently waving line in the
space between the extremes rather than
traveling the giant zigzag that moved
from one extreme to the other.

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REAL. CLEAR. INSIGHT.
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Our Conclusions
As a result of our work on issues of balancing tensions, we reach three important conclusions:
 Executives need to remain in the tension area. Either extreme is dangerous for the organization – it can fall off the tightrope. As
the CEO in found, you can’t stay with operational management exclusively – that’s a buggy whip mentality. Yet
there’s no reason to go all new just for newness’ sake. It’s all right to benefit from history and assume that some things are done
the way they are for good reasons.
 The operating model can be designed and the business system aligned to accommodate ambidexterity. As the executives in
found, misalignment means disaster. When they were able to achieve alignment, the synergy propelled them ahead.
Managing the alignment between strategy, infrastructure, and executive behavior must be an ongoing priority.
 If the tensions are not managed well, resources will be wasted. Flinging yourself back and forth between extremes is one way to
cover both territories, but it is not an effective or efficient way to do it. As the executive in found, extreme zigzagging
is wasting good corporate and executive energy.
Few managers are innately comfortable with both sides of these tensions. In fact, many top executives
have reached upper management by being particularly good at one side or the other. They’ve never
walked this particular tightrope. For example, top strategists are people who can generate a variety of
creative solutions to a given problem. Conversely, operations experts excel at processing information in a
way that finds one right solution.
However, when they reach the C-level, they must be able to hold and manage these two tensions
together. If all the C-level individuals don’t have this ambidextrous capability, then the composition and skill
mix of the team has to provide it jointly, and the team’s approach to decision making must be
collaborative enough to accommodate both sides of the tension.

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Determining who can grow and who cannot is a perpetual challenge for
CEOs. We use our 4Cs framework to help leaders make these decisions.
The Cs are: Capability, skill-based elements acquired through education
and experience; Characteristics, interaction and operating styles which,
while instinctive, can be strengthened or modified through experience
and reinforcement; Capacity, the primarily pre-wired attributes that
influence intellectual, emotional, and physical strength, endurance, and
perseverance; and, Core Motivation, those recurrent needs and concerns
that energize and inform individual behavior.

Through early identification of key talent, mapping of critical work
experiences, and providing access to meaningful roles, the organization
can help develop desired attributes and ensure it has the right
proficiency when it is needed. In our experience, however, it is the
unusual organization that has the discipline to do this well over time.
Often, shorter-term needs drive significant talent decisions, frequently at
the cost of seeding more broad and longer-term capability.

The ambidextrous executive profile cuts broadly across each of the 4Cs.
Development efforts can be useful for building Capabilities and
Characteristics, but Capacity and Core Motives are largely fixed for an
individual. And it is Capacity that often determines who will be at ease in
the zone of tension, managing the complexity, maintaining the fluid
balance for their organization. If ambidexterity is not present, selection –
and not development – may be the most productive course of action.
How can an organization develop its own
ambidextrous executives? Sending an operations
expert to an executive MBA program may add to
his knowledge base, but it will not necessarily give
him the know-how to manage ambidextrously.
Here are some ideas:
1) Continuously define the skills and attributes
that are critical for success in each role. This is
an essential step that is often overlooked.
2) Determine the criteria and methods you will
use to decide which employees or
candidates possess these skills and attributes
or are capable of learning them.
3) Identify or create development roles that
grow and accelerate these critical skills in
high potential managers.
4) Take care in placing the right people in the
right roles.
5) Create a continuing regimen of
reinforcement, development, and support.
Deploy a combination of feedback,
experience, and education-based leadership
development strategies.
That said, read about the 4Cs at the right.
Developing Executive Ambidexterity

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Ambidextrous Management: Dealing with Dichotomies
Here are a few questions that may help ambidextrous executives find the balance that
tames opposing tensions.
Is it an issue of alignment?
In the search for balance, we sometimes find that the conflict is a matter of alignment, as it
was in Ring Two. For example, when carefully aligned, short-term and long-term goals
shouldn’t conflict. The short-term actions should chain together to build out the long-term
objective.
Is it an issue of perspective?
In other cases, we find that the conflict is one of perspective. Centralization and
decentralization challenges, for example, can often be resolved with virtual meetings and
instantly-shared reporting systems.
Is it an issue of people?
Some managers – talented as they may be at lower levels – simply aren’t ready to manage
the ambidextrous nature of C-level challenges. Organizations can make progress by
ensuring that high potential people have a broader set of experiences earlier in their
careers.
Is it an issue of reporting and communication?
Sometimes we find that people are charged with making decisions without the data they
need to make them. In other cases, we have seen people focusing on the wrong
frequency of data. For example, they are mired in voluminous daily operation reports when
monthly or quarterly reports would give a better picture for the types of decisions they
make.
Is it an issue of motivation and reward?
It is a classic conundrum when expectations are for long-term performance and rewards
are for short-term performance.
Page 7
When There Is NO Tension
We often find teams and
organizations that are
composed of like individuals.
There’s little or no tension on
these teams. It’s no surprise
that executives tend to hire or
promote those most similar to
themselves. This encourages
collegiality; however, it tends
to reduce the constructive
differences that may lend
spark and creativity to problem
solving and planning. It’s
something to think about as
you do your hiring, promoting,
development, and succession
planning.

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Do you have ambidexterity?
For organizations to be competitive in the future, they’ll have to pay attention to
developing leaders. Ask yourself these questions:
Does your organization have the right balance
for the challenges of today?
Do you have difficulty finding balance?
How can you build on the successes of your
ambidextrous managers to provide advice for
managing both sides of the tightrope?