Interrupt the false binary
What Would Dale Do? is a newsletter about human behavior.
“By fighting you never get enough but by yielding you get more than you expected.”1
Either/or choices exist everywhere: Do you want the chicken or the beef? Should we hire an engineer or a designer? Should we prioritize profit or tech debt?
Perhaps with the exception of entrée selections at hosted events, most choices that appear to be binary are, in fact, not.
Either/or thinking is especially limiting in that it restricts you to a fixed number of solutions (2) when often far more exist, and it can impose a scarcity mindset on the interaction; i.e. “Either you get what you want, or I get what I want”.
And so, when you catch a false binary in the wild, interrupt it.
Upon spotting a “this or that” choice, you can expand two different directions:
What other options could we consider?
How can we do this AND that?
Because we believe in boundaries, and that unequivocal “yeses” are an anti-pattern, the answer is not “do all the things.” Rather, it’s a lesson to approach these points of tension by aligning with your counterpart to define the right things to do together.
The thing is: either/or choices are all-or-nothing. That means, if you want one thing, and the other person wants something else, only one of you wins. 100% to one person, and 0% to the other. But there are always more options! It’s your job, and your opportunity, to find them.
My dad’s an attorney, and when I was younger, I obviously wanted to understand why his job wasn’t like the ones I saw on TV (Olivia Benson OG fan since the 90s). He liked to say that he didn’t like litigation because “in a best case, one party wins, and generally both parties are unhappy,” and in corporate law he had the chance to try and “help both parties feel like they got a good deal.” He saw his job as having the opportunity to make the whole outcome greater than the sum of its two parts.
That’s my recommendation to you: interrupting the false binary means deliberately abdicating your pursuit of 100% of your wishlist, and instead, framing the conversation around: “It sounds like you want this, and I want that – what do we both agree on, and how can we each get as much of what we want as possible?” With this approach, it’s amazingly common to help each side achieve >50%.
This isn’t to say interrupting the false binary is a simple endeavor (people aren’t simple beings). There’s no reason to expect to have immediate muscle-memory. The first step is spotting it, recognizing there’s likely an expanded option-set, and then exploring how to maximize your outcome based on the full range of possibilities – including, both/and: the concept that in a choice, often both options can be true or realized.
Need visual chops and technical skills, or a creative person that can implement their own designs? Look for people with experience prototyping, or who work as UI Engineers or Creative Technologists.
Need to innovate your product and accommodate greater durability for your expanded customer base? Build a roadmap that encompasses both innovation and repairing technical debt.
Fielding a job offer that allows you to choose either: high-base and low-equity, or low-base and high equity? Perhaps you can ask for mid-mid.
Acknowledge that you’re faced with two choices; challenge yourself to interrupt it as a false binary; consider how both outcomes could be true; and ultimately seek to expand the alternatives.
Even if you do end up selecting one of the original options, you’ll do so with greater confidence because you’ve taken steps to validate, and eliminate, other possibilities.
Interrupting a false binary is a practice of controlling what you can control for two reasons:
While it’s impossible to control all outcomes, you can have an outsized impact on the outcome when you put yourself in a position to influence that option-set – and finding ways to add to the possible choices does just that.
It’s fully within your control whether you approach work with a fixed-mindset or a growth-mindset; interrupting the false binary is a prime and demonstrable example for taking a growth-minded posture.
When approaching trade-offs and tough choices, WWYD?
Old proverb, HTWFAIP pg. 134