If you need to solve contradictory challenges with limited resources, you have to change your mind. Accepting the new situation can allow for greater flexibility and productivity.
On a daily basis, we can face deciding between antagonistic situations, or that present paradoxes: For example, when it comes to the sale of products: offer higher quality at the lowest cost? Produce or outsource? Sell more quantity or earn more with the same level of sales? These may be some of the examples of the tension that arise from presenting questions that “go” in two different directions.
When we need to solve competing challenges with limited resources we have to change our way of thinking.
If it is about doing more with fewer available elements (the problem of scarce resources), change the question to “can I develop a task with so few resources?” to “what new possibilities does this situation allow me?” allows to see the problem from a more positive point of view.
Carrying out the practice of this way of directing differences, always from a more positive side, has determined (through different studies developed by researchers, psychologists and behavioral scientists) that people who learn to accept rather than reject opposing demands they show greater creativity, flexibility and productivity. This is called the “paradox mentality.”
Although it sounds difficult to understand, this mindset is based on the fact that the acceptance / analysis of apparent contradictions can break our preconceptions, offering us completely new ways of looking at a problem. We go from “or” to “and”, that is, we eliminate the exclusion of “or” (is this “or” that) and we embrace inclusion through “and”, considering that both possibilities are viable and that they can be integrated, balanced and even, that both are enhanced.