Life is full of paradoxes, and too often we ignore them or try to erase them when we should be learning how to manage them. Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis are the world’s leading experts on the topic, and grappling with their ideas is a valuable step toward becoming more comfortable with tensions and trade-offs.

At a time when humanity is facing some of its greatest challenges, every leader must know how to turn trade-offs into opportunities, tension into creativity, and discomfort into ambition. Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis show us how.

Smith and Lewis show how you can move from a mindset of constraint to one of abundance and build businesses prepared to execute for today and innovate for the future.

Both/And Thinking will be a flashlight in the dark for anyone—those grappling with organizational and societal challenges, as well as individuals dealing with family issues and life-changing decisions.

This book is, pure and simple, a masterpiece. And every word and semicolon is backed up by hard research. Don’t skim—dig in, take deep breaths, and reflect.

To navigate the increasing complexities of work, we need to abandon either/or thinking and embrace a both/and mindset. Smith and Lewis, the world’s leading authorities on paradoxes, have given us the guidebook to do exactly that and tackle our most difficult problems.

Reading BOTH/AND THINKING has changed how I see myself and the world around me. Through their rigorous research and vulnerable voices, Professors Smith and Lewis gently guide us towards promising possibilities we may not have imagined in our either/or minds.

We experience paradoxes everywhere; in business and in our personal lives. As leaders, the more we can identify them and know how to deal with them, while avoiding the trap of solving for one issue, the more effective we can be. Wendy and Marianne’s book offers new insights into the many paradoxes each of us face and a roadmap for addressing them. I highly recommend this book to all leaders who face these challenges on a daily basis.

Both/and thinking is mandatory for leaders today. Leaders need to transcend the binary world of either/or and adopt a more holistic and transformative approach. Having spent decades studying how leaders do this, Smith and Lewis bring us the wisdom necessary for all leaders – and for all of us – living in this complex world.

This book is a must-read for anyone that wants creative and sustainable new insights to address our world’s greatest problems. Smith and Lewis have integrated compelling research to offer us how to engage in a revolutionary new way of thinking. Our world would be a better place if everyone read this book and adopted the tools for both/and thinking.

Is life a zero sum game? Does wanting more X mean we have to settle for less Y? Nowhere is this question clearer than in business and finance. Which is why this book is so important for today’s decision takers. By posing the alternative ‘both/and’ to the traditional ‘either/or’, Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis explore the current relevance of the ‘work/life’ balance debate in top-level employee management. A ‘must read’ for all senior executives.

Part of being human is the internal tension we experience from competing demands across our personal and professional lives. Oh the hours we spend in mental anguish! Both/and thinking replaces win/lose solutions with problem solving that collaborates with alternative choices and allows for creative possibilities. There are many people, including myself, who will sleep better after reading Marianne and Wendy’s brilliant book.