In today's business environment, leaders face an unprecedented level of complexity. Organisations must simultaneously pursue efficiency and innovation, stability and agility, control and empowerment. As MIT's Roger Martin observed in his seminal work on integrative thinking, the most successful leaders don't choose between opposing ideas—they hold the tension between them and create something new.
This is the world of paradox, and it's not going away. Research from Smith and Lewis (2011) in the Academy of Management Review demonstrates that organisational paradoxes are intensifying due to globalisation, technological change, and stakeholder plurality. The question isn't whether your organisation faces paradoxes, but rather: how well equipped are you to navigate them?
Our Performance Principles offer a roadmap through this complexity. Developed and refined over decades of consulting practice, these eight principles provide both philosophical grounding and practical guidance for achieving breakthrough performance while maintaining workplace satisfaction. They don't promise simplicity—they promise something better: a way to work effectively within complexity itself.
Principle 1: Breakthrough Performance Through People is always possible
This principle challenges the fatalism that often accompanies complexity. When faced with seemingly intractable problems, organisations can fall into learned helplessness. Yet research consistently shows otherwise. Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset at Stanford demonstrates that belief in the possibility of improvement directly correlates with achievement. In her studies published in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, organisations that cultivate possibility thinking consistently outperform those that don't.
The key insight? Improvement isn't just possible—it's inherent to human systems. As Edgar Schein notes in Humble Inquiry, people naturally seek better ways of working when they feel psychologically safe and are given appropriate challenges.
Principle 2: Ordinary people achieve extraordinary things in breakthrough-conducive environments
This principle is robustly validated by Jim Collins's research in Good to Great. Collins discovered that breakthrough companies didn't have superhuman leaders—they had ordinary people working in systems that unleashed their potential. The difference wasn't the people; it was the environment.
Recent neuroscience research supports this. Studies by UCLA's Matthew Lieberman show that when people feel psychologically safe and connected, their cognitive capacity for problem-solving increases dramatically. The implication is profound: performance limitations are often environmental, not individual.
Principle 3: Co-creation is key to achieving ownership, learning and quality
Co-creation goes beyond collaboration. It's what happens when people don't just work together but create something genuinely new—something that didn't exist in anyone's mind before the interaction. This aligns with research by Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap on creative abrasion, published in Harvard Business Review, which demonstrates that innovation emerges from the productive collision of diverse perspectives.
In complex environments, no single person has the whole picture. Co-creation becomes not just desirable but essential. When people co-create solutions, they automatically develop ownership—because the solution reflects their thinking, values, and contributions. This is why co-created change initiatives have implementation success rates 3-4 times higher than top-down directives, according to research by John Kotter.
Principle 4: Sustained breakthrough performance requires balancing inner drive and outer pressure—at optimal levels
This principle addresses one of the most critical paradoxes in modern work: how to create urgency without creating burnout. Daniel Pink's research in Drive demonstrates that sustainable high performance requires intrinsic motivation—people must connect their personal purpose to organisational objectives.
The Yerkes-Dodson Law, a century-old principle that remains highly relevant, shows that performance follows an inverted U-curve with pressure: too little creates complacency, too much creates paralysis. The optimal zone lies between challenge and capability. But here's the crucial insight: this optimal zone is different for each person and shifts over time. Leaders must become adept at reading and adjusting these dynamics.
Principle 5: Improve the flow through attractors and the elimination of hindrances
This principle draws on systems thinking and complexity science. Ralph Stacey's work on complex responsive processes shows that organisations are not machines to be fixed but living systems to be influenced. The most effective interventions work with the system's natural direction—its "attractors"—rather than against them.
In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge introduces the concept of leverage points—places where small changes produce significant effects. The art lies in identifying the elements that naturally pull an organisation forward. We call them attractors. By identifying strong, compelling attractors, we can reduce the importance of obstacles that stand in our way and allow them to disappear naturally, thereby improving flow.
In light of the next principle, this does not preclude the need, at times, to remove obstacles that impede this flow.
This is fundamentally different from traditional change management, which often tries to push organisations in new directions through force.
Principle 6: The Power of AND — believe in both-and, not either-or
This principle directly addresses the paradoxical nature of modern business. In their groundbreaking book Built to Last, Collins and Porras identified this as the "Genius of the AND"—the ability to pursue seemingly contradictory objectives simultaneously. Visionary companies don't choose between stability and change, between short-term results and long-term vision, between discipline and creativity. They pursue both.
Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis have spent decades researching organisational paradoxes at the University of Delaware. Their paradox theory, published extensively in Organisation Studies, provides a framework for understanding how organisations can embrace competing demands rather than choosing between them. They identify four categories of organisational paradoxes: learning (old vs. new), organising (control vs. flexibility), performing (efficiency vs. innovation), and belonging (individual vs. collective).
The critical insight? Paradoxes cannot be resolved—they must be managed. Trying to eliminate paradox actually increases dysfunction. The most effective leaders develop "paradoxical cognition"—the ability to simultaneously recognise and work with contradictory elements.
In today's VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world, this capability isn't optional. Organisations must be simultaneously global and local, standardised and customised, efficient and innovative. Those who try to choose sides find themselves constantly oscillating. Those who embrace the tension create sustainable advantage.
Principle 7: Inspiration through feedback—evaluate and measure to motivate
Here lies another paradox: measurement can either kill motivation or ignite it. The difference lies in purpose and design. When measurement serves learning and improvement, it motivates. When it serves judgment and control, it demotivates.
Research by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, published in Harvard Business Review as "The Power of Small Wins," demonstrates that the single greatest motivator is progress in meaningful work. But here's the catch: people can't experience progress if they can't see it. This requires measurement—not for control, but for visibility.
The most effective feedback systems follow a "formative rather than summative" assessment approach. They help people see where they are, where they're going, and how to close the gap. Google's re:Work project has extensively documented how their most effective teams use transparent metrics not to judge but to learn.
Principle 8: Treasure human interaction—create meaning and identity, and appreciate differences
This final principle addresses what might be the most profound paradox of all: in an era of digital transformation and AI, human connection matters more than ever, not less.
Research by Brené Brown on vulnerability and connection has shown that meaningful work and psychological belonging are not soft issues—they're performance issues. In her study documented in Dare to Lead, organisations with high belonging have 56% higher job performance and 50% lower turnover risk.
Similarly, Amy Edmondson's research at Harvard on psychological safety—published in The Fearless Organisation—demonstrates that teams where people feel safe to express themselves, ask questions, and acknowledge mistakes consistently outperform those where people play it safe. In complex environments where no one has all the answers, this capability becomes critical.
The appreciation of differences isn't just an ethical imperative—it's a strategic necessity. Scott Page's research on diversity, detailed in The Difference, uses mathematical modelling to show that diverse teams often outperform homogeneous teams of higher-ability individuals when solving complex problems. The reason? Diverse perspectives produce more solution pathways.
How do these principles work together in practice? Consider a technology company facing the classic paradox: it needs to maintain its existing products (stability, efficiency, optimisation) while also innovating for the future (change, experimentation, risk-taking).
Applying the principles:
The organisation starts with Principles 1 and 2—affirming that a breakthrough is possible and that their current team can achieve it. This prevents the trap of thinking they need different people or a complete overhaul.
They engage in co-creation (Principle 3), bringing together product teams, customer service, sales, and engineering to design a dual-track system. This isn't consultation—it's a genuine joint creation of a new operating model.
They apply Principle 4 by helping individuals identify their intrinsic motivation on either the "explore" or "exploit" track, rather than forcing them into roles. They balance outer pressure (market demands, deadlines) with inner drive (mastery, autonomy, purpose).
Using Principle 5, they identify their natural attractor as customer impact and remove hindrances such as siloed decision-making and redundant approval processes that slow both innovation and optimisation.
They embody Principle 6—the Power of AND—by explicitly refusing to choose between stability and innovation. They create structures that enable both simultaneously, with different teams, different metrics, and different rhythms, all coordinated at key integration points.
They implement Principle 7 through separate but complementary measurement systems: the optimisation track measures efficiency gains and quality improvements, while the innovation track measures learning velocity and experiment throughput. Both track customer impact as the ultimate measure.
Finally, Principle 8 ensures that people on both tracks value each other's work, understand their mutual interdependence, and create forums for cross-pollination. The stability team teaches the innovation team about system constraints; the innovation team shows the stability team emerging possibilities.
Navigating paradox requires a fundamentally different leadership approach than managing in stable, predictable environments. As Ronald Heifetz describes in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, technical problems have known solutions, but adaptive challenges require new learning and new ways of operating.
Most organisational challenges today are adaptive. They cannot be solved by applying existing knowledge—they require holding tension, embracing paradox, and creating new possibilities. This demands what Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey call "developmental leadership"—leadership that helps people grow their capacity to meet complexity with complexity.
The beauty of these principles is that they don't sacrifice satisfaction for performance or vice versa. Research consistently shows they move together. Gallup's extensive workplace studies, spanning decades and millions of workers, demonstrate that engagement and performance are strongly correlated. Organisations don't choose between happy people and high performance—they achieve both or neither.
Why? Because in complex environments, breakthrough performance requires the full engagement of human intelligence, creativity, and commitment. This only emerges when people find meaning in their work, experience growth, and feel valued in their organisations.
These eight Performance Principles don't provide a detailed map—complexity makes detailed mapping impossible. Instead, they offer a compass: a way to orient yourself, make decisions, and maintain direction even when the terrain shifts.
In a business environment characterised by paradox—where you must be efficient and innovative, stable and agile, global and local, disciplined and creative—these principles provide both philosophical grounding and practical guidance. They help you embrace complexity rather than flee from it, work with paradox rather than fight against it, and achieve breakthrough performance without burning out your people.
The question isn't whether you'll face paradox and complexity. You will. The question is whether you'll have principles to guide you through them.
Want to explore how these principles apply to your specific organisational challenges? The Performance Principles emerged from decades of consulting practice and continue to evolve through application in diverse contexts. Your organisation's principles may differ—discovering and articulating them is itself a powerful exercise in co-creation and strategic clarity.