Creating Good Career Choices

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Roger Martin. Roger is an acclaimed author, and has written 11 books. We're going to talk about a wonderful book that he wrote today called Creating Great Choices. He is an advisor to CEOs on strategy, design and integrative thinking and is a professor.

He is director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, where he also served as dean, and then, prior to that, he spent 13 years as director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm. Roger, thank you so much for writing this book. So practical. And finally, Roger has a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Really, really appreciate your taking the time.

Roger Martin: I appreciate you taking the time to interview me. Anita. This is a treat for me. I've always been a huge admirer of the Chicago Booth school, so this is a pleasure.

Anita Brick: Well, thank you, thank you. We had many, many questions this time. And let's start off with a basic one. This came from an alum. She said, I understand that a problem needs to be articulated before one can create opposing models. How does one decide which problems are worth solving?

Roger Martin: Well, I generally think of that as what is causing the greatest pain, and I would go after solving that problem first. When you solve the biggest pain for you, other more minor problems disappear along with it. Aim for what's causing the most pain, and you're probably not going to be wasting your time. Even if you find out halfway through, there's another problem you need to solve. The actual process of starting to work on the initial problem has taught you something more about what the problems are, and that in and of itself is a help guide.

Anita Brick: I know that in our conversation we're talking about careers. So let's jump into a couple of questions related to that. And one current executive MBA student who said, I am looking at what I consider to be two opposing career choices. One is consulting and the other is corporate. And I know there are a lot of tradeoffs with both. What questions should I be asking to come up with a solution that is ideally the best of both worlds?

Roger Martin: Follow the process in the book that we lay out. The first is to understand how those two models work. I Fell in love with the model. Really, what is awesome about the corporate route or how does it work for me? How does it work for other stakeholders? The group that I'm employed by? How does that model produce great results then consulting?

How does that model produce great results? Take the raw materials from that. The diagnosis of what makes those models work, to be able to see where are the things that are overlapping and reinforcing versus where are the tension, and then apply the three pathways for finding an integrative solution to those raw materials that you've now laid out, which is the logic behind the models.

Come up with potential answers and prototypes and try them out in your mind. Do little experiments, even if there are thought experiments in this case, because the real way to experiment would be to do the corporate job and do the consulting job. It's a great example to work on.

Anita Brick: Okay, so you mentioned three paths. What are those three paths?

Roger Martin: Well we call them hidden gems, double down and decomposition. In a hidden gem you take a little piece of each model and combine them in a new way. An example of this is Red hat, the dominant Linux software player, when that was just a tiny little company trying to figure out what to do. Far beyond that, I've got two opposing models: free software or proprietary software, and he laid out how free software worked and how proprietary software worked.

And there's an inherent conflict in what he ended up choosing. He said, I'm going to take this piece central to me of the free software model, which is the client, and customize it because I will give him source code. I'm going to take only out of the proprietary model service revenues that are very lucrative. If I only take those pieces, I no longer have this huge conflict.

That's what he did and created completely. I was about the winning strategy, but that would be a hidden gem. A decomposition would be to say, I've got to opposing models and I've got to choose between them. What I do is I take the solution space and divide it into two, and apply one model to one and the other model to the other.

Okay, that would be the original breakthrough strategy of Target, where the models were to be a big low cost player like Walmart or the high end like Macy's. If we try to apply both of those to the store, you can't do both of those things. They're in conflict. But if I start considering my store as two stores within a store, one is where I feel the same bottle of tie at Walmart does.

The customer can compare prices exactly in that part of the store. I've got to be very cost effective and price the same as Walmart. I have another part of the store, which is where I can have unique items that nobody else has, so they can't compare prices. And I'm going to make that really cool with designers from Sony, or really start to produce a lower end version of their products, and then I can have the model expect more pay less, which is a decomposition integration.

So the final double down is you push so hard on one model that you really like that you can extend it to get the benefit from the other model. Example, a Toronto International Film Festival where the two models were the exclusive festival for the industry, like con or the community oriented film festival like Tribeca or Sundance or Toronto or Berlin.

It's much more open. The community can go, hundreds of films are shown. There isn't a jury being the arbiter of taste, peers handling the director of the film festival. Love the inclusive model. That's what he lived for and that's why he was in it. Everything about it except it wasn't economically sustainable. So he said, in what way can I be inclusive if not double down on inclusivity in a way that gets me the buzz that Kohn gets, that brings the media there, which enables great sponsorship opportunities, and to make lots of money to be able to fund the festival.

And what he came to the conclusion of is that he could use the inclusivity to his advantage, because Toronto is a little version of the world. And if he created not an juried award, but a People's Choice award, where every filmgoer goes to film gets to vote on what he or she thinks is the best film in the festival, that would become a great indicator of the future likely success of films. By doing that, he made it even more inclusive in a way that got him the benefit from the other model.

Anita Brick: I love the example because he was so committed to inclusiveness of it that he really drove to an outcome.

Roger Martin: I couldn't agree more. It's a lovely example, but what all I'd say is that if you vote I think it was a student he looked for. How can I decompose the problem? How can I decompose it over time? Maybe actually what I need to do is do consulting for two years to get ready and more prepared for the corporate job.

That's the decomposition. You're using most both models, but decomposing them across time. Yeah. Interesting. If he really, really wants that corporate experience, the one thing that he would love to have from the consulting experience, it's getting a variety of opportunities. Maybe he talked the corporation into doing an explicit rotation plan, where he rotates through six parts of the company in the first two years, so that he's doing corporate totally and becoming better for the corporation by knowing the whole thing and getting the one thing he cares about from the consulting. Those would be examples of how you could think through, how you could combine aspects of attributes of the two models to create something that's better than either could be.

Anita Brick: Okay, good. Well, there's three other two students and an alum. Again, that same dichotomy of X or y. So an evening student said, how would you decide where to live to begin the next phase of your career if you were single and could move anywhere? I struggle with looking for a place that has both the best career opportunities and a place to build a family and a solid friend network.

I feel like these are either or decisions and I can't do both. I mean, obviously we're not going to solve everyone, but how would you go about these two? Sounds like the person already made a decision that it's impossible to integrate the two. How would you help this person relieve some of this stuck thinking about this.

Roger Martin: Is classic, right? These are the kinds of challenges that we do face in life. So I feel pain. But what I would say is the first step has to be a frame of this is just what's been presented to me. The world has presented to me this trade off and I haven't started work yet.

I can just work away at it. Layout those two models. How do they work? What benefits do they provide and then asking the question, what's stopping me from having the benefits of both? Could I decompose the problem in some interesting way? Can I double down on one to get the benefit of the other? Can I just pick a piece from each and create a new solution?

I think he or she will find a solution that's better than choosing one or the other. Have heart and follow the process. I can tell you, Anna, we've done this hundreds of times and also for organizations, and I've never yet found a situation where when they put their minds to work on this with an organized process, I haven't seen a situation where they haven't been able to come up with a better solution. Well, two.

Anita Brick: Maybe we can take this next example and walk through with a little bit more detail. There is a 52 year old female alum who started in electrical engineering, did management consulting, did sales and business development, had her own startup and now really wants to go back into engineering. I Am thinking about getting a master's in electrical engineering. Said if she won the lottery it would be a no brainer.

She would go. And when you think about the dichotomy here, if it does really come down to it, she kind of laid it out. It comes down to money. If someone gave her fill in the blank, 5 million, 10 million, whatever that level would be, she'd go do it. Are the extreme models having to pay everything on her own versus having a free ride? Is that really the issue? Because with all the other elements, it gets very complicated. Feels like that's really the issue. Would you then collapse it into that kind of analysis?

Roger Martin: Yes or no? My reaction to it with a framing is if there were no constraint, what that enables you to do is not think, because the no brainer, the existence of constraints in life is what causes us to have to think. What I sort of lean against in the book and the previous book on this is we seem to have been trained or taught that what thinking means is deciding between the options put forward, sort of doing that NPV or the IRR or the pros and cons and picking.

And I say that's lazy. The more effective thing to do is knuckle down and actually put on your thinking cap. And in this case I would say the two models go into debt to get your education. You want the education and you have to have the painful part of financing it, maybe with expenses or don't do it and live with some remorse for not having done it for the rest of your life.

I would just use those as the two opposing extreme models. So push into the extreme and say, well, how do those models work to produce their outcomes? You'll be able to find an integrative solution. You would know because you live in a business school like I do. Anita. In essence, the business school world has come up with an integrative solution for that similar problem part time MBA and MBA.

Anita Brick: Right.

Roger Martin: Eastern. Here's how you do it. You keep on earning money. Your education is a bit slower, but you get your MBA and you keep working so that you can finance. That's integrative.

Anita Brick: Solution. I agree you were talking about extreme models. There was another exact MBA student who said, I'm struggling a bit about choosing the most extreme models as a place to start solving a specific problem. How do you advise others to solve strategic problems in a fast paced, high growth environment? When viable solutions are required with a short turnaround time? So how do you get to the extreme models? But if you sit too much in the middle, nothing really new or different or effective is going to emerge from it.

Roger Martin: There is an assumption inside people that integrative thinking takes a long time, and I would just encourage them to imagine that's not the case in the first part. The Affordable Line, which was the original book on innovative thinking that I wrote ten years ago. This book is a follow up from that. We gave the example of a guy who's now a billionaire and a billionaire, and the basis of decision had between closing Market Day actually called it Tuesday, 4:30 p.m. between then and 9 a.m. on Wednesday, he had to make a fundamental decision that would either have the potential of kind of bankrupting him or leaving him with little or nothing, or be the catalyst

for becoming a billionaire. He made an integrative solution in the time he had. And so I would just encourage this person doesn't matter that life is fast paced and quickly changing everything. You can fit integrative thinking into that time frame that you have. And don't use that as an excuse here. So many people make excuses. Well, I didn't really have time to think about it a lot. I just had to do something. You always have time to think. The harder and more cleverly than not.

Anita Brick: I really do agree, because a lot of people look for compromises, that they're not very effective. But sometimes people reach an impasse. And there was an evening student who said, I'm working with a team to launch a new venture within a global company. I really like how diverse we are in terms of our backgrounds and opinions. That said, we keep reaching an impasse. What advice would you have, Roger, to help me, help us get past our conflicting mental models?

Roger Martin: Well, it is to essentially have more acceptance of them falling in love with the new model. So if you're at an impasse, take one side of the impasse and say, okay, let's lay out how this model produces the outcomes that the people who are proponents of this model view are the outcomes of it? What's the outcome for the various players there from for them, for their customers, for their shareholders, whatever it is, lay that out and then say, let's forget that exists.

Now let's go to the other model. Let's lay that out, figure out what's beneath it, then go through the process and they'll find a better model that they'll only find a better model when they all agree to seriously fall in love with the two models. Because when you fall in love with the model, you'll appreciate it. Beneficial characteristics. If you see it as the enemy to be defeated, you will downplay, ignore its greatest features, and then you won't be able to be in a position to mine those for something better.

Anita Brick: Okay, I agree with you. How do you get people to open their minds enough to be willing to fall in love with something that they came in hating?

Roger Martin: A lot of it actually has to do with being playful. You just say, humor me here. Let's just act as if we were gaga over this model. Preach the model. This way, just for fun. And by the way, if you're worried about being biased toward you, you're going to do it for the other one too. So let's just have fun.

Let's lay them out and get people to be playful about it. Not too damn serious, because if they're too damn serious, they'll just be sticking to their point of view. Once you've got the guts of the models laid out, I swear what happens is people start saying, you know what? This isn't quite as conflictual as we thought. Oh, there are a whole lot of similarities.

There are some real commonalities. The tension maybe isn't quite as extreme as we thought. You've got to get below those labels to how this thing actually works? And if you can get them there by that time, they start to get intrigued and say, oh, We could maybe put this together in a different way. So it's getting over that hump, which is that these two things are so in conflict that the only choice is to try to beat the other person into submission and get my way. That's you got to get beyond.

Anita Brick: Got it. Now, here's the other side of that coin question from a weekend student. I agree that appreciating the thoughts and ideas of others like we're just talking about is very, very important. However, I can go overboard and lose my own point of view in the process. What advice can you share to help me balance the two?

Roger Martin: Ask for help. What you want is a sense of even handedness and collaboration. In this I would say to that person, say, hey, I think we need to lay out both models and fall in love with both models. I'm going to fall in love with your model along with you, so that we can unearth all the logic that sits in behind it.

But I need you to tell me that you'll help me unearth mine. I don't want to lose us, to lose the power of having that second model. As with most things in life, you don't have to do them all yourself. People are social creatures. If you help the other person unravel his or her model and lay out the logic of it, chances are they'll turn around and do the same for you. As their social creatures, we care about one another.

Anita Brick: I agree. Here's another question. This from another MBA student. It was very intriguing. I understand that people like to hire people who are like them, and that's actually a problem for me because I'm a career changer and an atypical candidate. What advice would you have for me to break through this issue and be taken seriously? So it almost sounds like if you're the hiring manager and I'm this exact MBA student, you have your model of what you like to hire, and you hire a certain type of people, a certain experience from certain locations, etc., etc. that's one side, but I want you to be able to consider me and I would be the other. I would be the opposing model. In this kind of situation, how do you get others to bring in integrative thinking when they don't really have to? You want to be the other opposing model.

Roger Martin: This is a somewhat trickier one, and I'll break it into two pieces if you don't mind. Sure. So the first piece would be straight up strategy advice. You have a really crummy self definition of what you're up to that's hard to sell. I wouldn't try to sell that. I'm a career switcher. What you want to do is understand and be able to sell the benefits of what you've arrived at by having had a variety of experiences.

Okay. In what way is that variety a great thing for your prospective employer? And sure, tell that the fact that you switched careers, if anything, is negative when perceived that way. So if you walk up and I'm not saying he would walk up to the person to say I'm a career switch or hire me, I'd say, no thanks.

But if instead you say what I found over time is that the way that I can become the most effective manager possible is to make sure I get early in my career, a number of different experiences, so I can learn an array of skills and capabilities. I can come now with that background and really contribute in a way that somebody with a narrow background can.

That's not so the integrative thinking by the integrative thinking answer, this would be sort of a kind of a more radical approach that would necessitate some amount of skill, would be to engage the recruiter in a thought experiment, say, you know, there's two models for people showing up at your door for this job. One model is the person who's worked in this industry or this function or whatever, you know, whatever that person is their entire life versus the person who's worked on a variety of industries, not including this industry.

Those would be two models. Let's play those two models and figure out what led to that. And is there a better answer that is better than those two? And yes, the person at least thinking about combined answers, but that would take a lot of skill.

Anita Brick: However it could be, maybe he could play with it or someone else in a similar situation. Maybe not. The employer, but with mentors or people in their network who would be willing to help them think this way. And maybe I'm taking it too far, but maybe from that integrative thinking approach, they could come up with a better solution, and that could end up being their theme or their messaging or their story.

Roger Martin: So no, that's not taking it too far, Anita. That's a good, good idea. That would be in a broad category of stimulation that you're right. But what you've described is, in effect, a simulation. I'm going to run a simulation before I go in and do the real thing and see what I learned from the simulation. I love it, it's a good idea. Good.

Anita Brick: I know we're rapidly running out of time. Do you have time for one more question?

Roger Martin: Oh, sure. Sure. Absolutely.

Anita Brick: Okay, great. You've given us a lot of interesting thoughts about creating great choices. Is it very much like both? That's one of the reasons I personally liked it a lot. But maybe you could help us integrate some of what we were just talking about. So what are three things that someone could do who's in the midst of a choice where integrative thinking could help, and they want to get past any doubts? What are three things that this person can do?

Roger Martin: Doing a sort of integrative thinking, thought experiment is worth doing. Just imagining really polar opposite ways of going forward. And again, let's model how they work, the logic of the model and try to come up with an integrative solution to help them convince themselves that there's much more optionality to life than they may think. Many people live in fear of my career. This is my life. I only have one life to live. I'm going to have to make the biggest choice. Now. I could do X or I could do Y, and boy, I can't do both. That freaks people out, especially young people who don't have that much experience yet. If they could come up with an integrative solution, even a thought experiment, they will see that they can shape their future rather than take what comes your way.

And that would give them that sense. Now, me, my number one piece of advice. A second piece of advice would be life is long. There's a lot of time to do a lot of things. I'm not saying you shouldn't waste time, but life is long. And as long as you are learning something, you haven't wasted time. Even if you end up doing something else rather than the thing you started on.

Focus on learning. Whatever you do, you can learn it. And that is my job. One third piece of advice is chill out. Be calm. Good things happen to calm people. People are agitated and I think making more mistakes and being less fun to work with. And if you're calm, people will say, that's a great person to work with and they'll give you more responsibility then work on the things that produce fear in you, that make you have to live life in an agitated state rather than a calm state.

Anita Brick: You want to make sure that you find things that you do to take you away from that high level of stress. If you find yourself in it.

Roger Martin: Absolutely stress of that sort is, I think, an enemy. It makes doing everything else that much more difficult.

Anita Brick: I got it. Any other final words of wisdom that you'd like to share with us today?

Roger Martin: Not so much words of wisdom, but words of gratitude. Anita, you've done a lovely job on this interview. I mean, as you know, I do lots of interviews and the like. It matters a lot whether a person has a thoughtful way of doing it. And you're terrific.

Anita Brick: Thank you. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Love the book. Glad you wrote it, Roger. And maybe we will connect again in the future sometime.

Roger Martin: I would be delighted to Anita. Based on this experience I would be delighted to.

Anita Brick: Wonderful and thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.