There is a story that says that two people presented themselves to a Moslem judge (Cadiu) to tell each others story. One of them said that he borrowed from the other one ten 10 eggs and now when he wanted to return those eggs the other one wanted 200 eggs in return ! Or if he borrowed 10 must give back 10. The Moslem judge (Cadiu) said: "-Yes you are right!” -" So let’s see, says the other one , I gave him the eggs two years ago and if I would have put them to make baby chickens I would have had 10 chickens, that would also have made some eggs, and so on . I did a simple adding and it could result 200 eggs for me, said the other one! “Yes you are right said again the Moslem judge “. In that moment someone says: Judge, but it is not possible that both of them are right “, " Yes, interesting, said the Judge ...you are right too "....

This story in no longer a curiosity for managerial world. A company can not evolve efficiently as long as it is chosen just “one way” from the confliction parts. Managers from present times are forced to work in the same time with two contradictory extremes. For example, any critical decisional activity must be centralized and decentralized concurrently, most companies are forced to use in parallel the niche marketing and the mass marketing, and the organization functions must be differentiated and specialized but in the same time integrated in a unitary position. We could add to this that any demand of change requires stability and not any kind of stability but one that is opened to changes.

Managers can control the present by taking notice of future perspectives! And this is not all! To make a company work efficiently, managers must focus on employee as a prior person. And the list goes on…

These days the management is far from what means control, procedures and hierarchy. Those concepts have other meaning now. Most companies declare that have free managerial positions, but if you take an eye to the specifications of those positions you can see easily that they are looking for leaders instead of managers. How could a manager achieve performance in a world that requires rigorously ration ability and permanent creativeness? How can a manager that thinks in terms of "boss" - "servant" make his employees respect procedures but in the same time to be with initiative...and this thing is supposed to like them and to bring them enthusiasm and dedication?

I do remember a recent case of a sales agent that to sale a product to a more demanding buyer (that would wanted that product with a specific accessory, but which they didn’t have in stock at their store), took money from the administration and bought the accessory from a competitive store. This way the agent sold the product, the customer was satisfied, but the organizational problems created by his "initiative” were major. First "alarm signal" came from the financial accountant department that requested drastic measures regarding the employee for taking money from the administration, that being beyond legality limits. Although initially the sales director took his side, after a while he changed his mind and thought that “he needs to give a lesson” so that this kind of “indiscipline acts" never happen again and proposed the employee to be fired. Human resources director thought that legally is hard to prove that what the employee did could be called indiscipline because even if he took money from the administration he used them for the company interest and firing him is a little bit difficult so it would be better if “things would stay as they are ". So, the problem got to the executive board...

If "destroying evil from its roots” means eradicating the initiative, of course that this employee should go. And this, the sooner the better for him and for the company. This kind of company should have like motto for its employees: "Do not disturb us with initiatives that we don’t understand, keep them for those companies that are interested in performance”. That specific incident had an interesting solution: the sales agent was penalized with 20 euros for taking money from the administration without approval and awarded with 50 euros for his "initiative". Probably such a company still has chances to become competitive on the market even though most of its managers need a re-qualification program for the modern market.

These kinds of cases are seen frequent, and companies must permanently and at the same time, satisfy contradictory exigencies. For this are required leaders that know clearly what they want but are sufficiently flexible so that they can “manage" those kind of paradoxes, which no longer are part of the exceptions category.

To perfect themselves managers must learn principles and common things but, to apply them, they must think different! "Traditional thinking is no longer useful in the new world, says Michael Gelb in his book "Thinking about change" ...Gelb finds a term "sinvergence " - explained like the ability to think by combining analytic with free and imaginative thinking. “Only by combining the best qualities of booth cerebral hemispheres managers could face changes, ambiguity and paradox ..."

In other words, like manager in a modern organizational environment does not mean that you always have to make a compromise between extremes ( that lead to tolerance, inactivity and futility ) but to be able to think and apply functional models in which those extremes coexist.

Translated and adapted from Romanian language by Roxana Huzum.