A friend of mine from a past work life caught me off guard one day as I launched into a tirade about something that had me upset. I was complaining that the business needed to pick between two particular paths, and I was frantically trying to emphasize that they needed to pick path A or path B. At just the right moment, he calmly looked at me and said:
“There is no OR, only AND.”
That comment completely deflated me, because I realized the profound wisdom being offered. It is a phrase that has more importance than you realize. The more you think about it, the more you will understand that rarely, if ever, do people choose between two options. They almost always go with both, and so it goes with almost everything in life.
Also, consider this. Why do you even need to force a choice in the first place. You can do both, and you will find out. One, both, or neither of them will work out in the long run, so forcing a choice has little consequence. I took this piece of wisdom to heart. Instead of fighting the company, I agreed to both. Everyone felt happy, but in the end, I focused on the one I wanted to do anyway, and that turned out to be the right decision.
This phrase has tremendous power in defusing some of the most difficult and tense situations. Often you have well intentioned and like minded people trying to achieve an objective, and they will come to loggerheads because they are unwilling to budge on their position. You will be in an OR situation. The best way to handle this is to do the same thing my friend did. Emphasize that they do not have to use an or statement. They can use an and statement.
Engineers love it when you say this. There is no need to separate when we can concatenate. This will give them pause, and then they will smile, chuckle, and agree that you are correct, and laugh at themselves for forcing an unnecessary decision tree.
The older I get, the more I try to notice when my mind is shrinking the world into either or. If I can step back for a moment and say there is no OR, only AND, I make room for movement. I give myself permission to test both paths in a small, honest way, with clear measures and simple guardrails. I care less about winning the argument and more about learning what works. Try both if you can, then watch closely. Keep what proves itself. Let the rest fall away. Progress is rarely a single door we choose once. It is usually a corridor of doors, and the person who keeps walking is the one who gets somewhere worth going.
