“It Depends” Leadership
Two years ago, I sat down to tackle my first business school case. It was about a popcorn company. When class started and the professor asked what we thought the business should do next, our eager hands shot up with all sorts of ideas.
“Let’s sell microwave popcorn!”
“Let’s enter the Chinese market.”
“Let’s just shut down the business.”
We had some good discussion, but as class was ending, I raised my hand and asked the professor, “So what was the right answer?”
His response has stuck with me. He said, “The most important thing you’ll learn in business school is that the answer is always, always ‘it depends.’”
I was looking for the answer, the clear-cut, definitive, black-and-white answer. But what I’ve learned since is that, in business and in life, there’s almost never one solution. Our world is increasingly complex, rapidly changing, and surprisingly nuanced. One problem might have 2 or 3 or 10 good answers. The challenges that we will face in the arena of leadership — where we invest, who we hire, and how we make decisions — will rarely have one-size-fits-all solutions.
So when answer is it depends, it means that we must have not just the knowledge to tackle challenges, but the nuance to see more of the angles. Not just the skills to solve problems, but the sensitivity to work with the people around us. Not just the competence to step up to what’s hard, but the courage to stand up for what’s right.
In our future careers, technology will change, business models will change, the environment will change, how we work will change (and by the way, the diversity of our teams must change). How we respond to these challenges will require it depends thinking. We must look beyond obvious answers and 30-second sound bytes and lean into complexity and empathy. Approaching business (and all of life) with an it depends mindset isn’t a sign of lagging confidence, it’s a sign of humility and humanity. A little more thoughtfulness can help us lead teams, manage crises, mitigate our biases and blind-spots, and make better decisions for businesses and people we will serve.
I’m convinced that business is a vessel for imagining a better world and making it reality. And, to paraphrase the great Sorkin, people have phenomenal capacity—when leaders balance the pursuit of profit, efficiency, and advancement with thoughtfulness, compassion, and humility, our capacity for changing the world may well be limitless.
How will you do it? The answer, of course, is it depends. I can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with.
- This post is excerpted from my commencement address at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in 2019.*
