Paradox

Last weekend, a knot formed in my stomach as I prepped my teaching material on performance and motivation. The more I thought about how these concepts play out in the modern workplace—with all its individual preferences, the pursuit of personal best, and the sheer volume of work—the more I realized I was staring down a serious leadership paradox. Does what drives one person to excel actually propel the entire organization forward? And what if, in some cases, it actively works against innovation?

I want to dive into three key forces that we believe drive individual performance, yet often fail to lift the individual or the organization, sabotaging innovation.

The Siren Call of Independence

I'm a control freak. Autonomy isn't just a preference for me; it's the lifeblood of job satisfaction. Early in my career, I wore my independence like a medal—a non-conformist getting the job done my way. I craved the accountability that came with that freedom, constantly seeking roles that were broken or blank slates, jobs where I could build from scratch. My measure of organizational success was simple: my ability to operate unimpeded.

I saw this same hunger in my teams, maybe less aggressively expressed, but just as real. As I managed more complex, diverse groups, the demand for autonomy was palpable. In today's landscape of remote work, technology-driven change, and persistent uncertainty, the clamour for control is louder than ever. Organizations are conceding—by choice, by necessity, or by sheer exhaustion.

For the individual, this rise in autonomy has been largely positive. But for the organization? I'm unconvinced it’s a universal performance booster, and I strongly suspect it's the enemy of innovation. For every person thriving in their new freedom, there's likely another floundering under the weight of it.

The leadership challenge here is immense: How do we foster individual autonomy without sacrificing the collective good? When I stepped into a senior academic leadership role overseeing a large group of faculty, their independence was legendary. They controlled their work, their methods, and their decisions. Yet, from a program or school-wide perspective, this freedom translated into stagnation, not performance or large-scale innovation. My job became a test of leadership: weaving these fiercely independent threads into a cohesive, focused, and impactful tapestry.

My early choices in that role were defining. First, I had to redefine my own need for control. Early on, I felt knowing everything was key to my performance. But in the complexity of a senior role, that was impossible, breeding only anxiety. I realized I needed different knowledge. I did two things. I told the faculty they were the content experts—that was their space of control. I would challenge and contribute, but I was not the ultimate expert on business education; they were. The knowledge I needed, and would relentlessly pursue, was engagement information: what connected students to the course, the program, the school, and what broke that connection. This gave everyone autonomy while knitting us together. We became interdependent.

Second, I clarified our single unifying purpose: to engage students for the purpose of employment. Success was defined by anything—individually or collectively—that improved a student's job prospects. This collective lens didn't stifle individual action; it directed it. This collectivist approach was transformational. Over a decade, we grew enrollment in a shrinking market, boosted student GPA, improved retention, launched groundbreaking delivery models, and won over 60 awards. Most importantly, we became a community of strong individuals.

The Pursuit of Process, Structure, and Clarity

If you made a list of three things to make your job better, I'd bet two would be process-related. If only things were clearer, if only we had better processes, if only we had structure... For over 30 years, this mantra has echoed in every workplace I’ve known. When we nailed a process improvement, we saw a performance bump, but the process work never ended.

The wins were clearest in transactional, linear work—simple processes with measurable outcomes. But when the work was complex, overlapping, and the outcomes variable, process improvement often failed to deliver systemic change. Worse, the performance gains often only settled with the person or team already holding the most authority.

I'm not against process improvement. What frustrates me is the narrowed thinking it often inspires, where the ultimate goal becomes simplification. Simple thinking can't solve complex problems. Simple thinking certainly won't drive organizational performance or innovation in complex systems.

I remember a critical challenge: increasing failure rates in first-year courses. We initially assumed the fix was process and structure. But as the team dove into simplification, I recognized the focus was misguided. I pulled us back and asked: What problem are we truly trying to solve? We realized a simple process tweak wouldn't address the many underlying factors. Our solution was a total rebuild—a redesign of course delivery where process and structure were engineered to drive the result. The new process was more work from more people. But the ultimate solution was transformational. The secret sauce, however, wasn't the design itself, but what happened in the spaces between the steps: the human interactions. Improving the human dynamics made the process, structure, and clarity happen.

I learned that providing clarity and structure didn’t necessarily make the engine run better. The engine runs on people's willingness to coordinate and cooperate, to genuinely care about others' success, and to sacrifice personal comfort for collective outcomes. Great leaders recognize when the problem looks like process, structure, or clarity, but they act on the human components of cooperation and coordination that lie in the gaps.

The Conundrum of Well-being

The third paradox leaders face is the well-being of their people. When performance dips, the cause could be skills, experience, or team dynamics, but increasingly, it’s the individual's well-being. Early in my career, personal well-being was an external issue, dealt with off-hours. Today, it’s central. Some organizations have mastered creating safe, brave spaces; others lag. Individuals are better at connecting their inner state to their work output.

The challenge for leaders is that supporting individual well-being is exhausting and resource-intensive. Needs are vast, diverse, and constantly shifting. Worse, customizing work for one team member can actively damage another's well-being. The leader is often forced into a no-win choice: mandate uniformity or embrace complete, unsustainable customization. Both hurt organizational performance.

Great leaders and high-performing teams share this responsibility. Well-being shifts from an individualized response to collective adaptability. The best organizations incentivize collective behaviours that drive collective performance, not just business targets. How people work together and how they support each other matters more than hitting a specific goal. Strong leaders cultivate an environment of mutual understanding, care, and compassion, allowing for necessary individual customization. But more importantly, they build an environment where an individual's contribution to collective well-being is paramount.

This collectivist mindset has a fascinating side effect: acts of caring for others' success actually boost individual well-being. I used to tell staff that simple, sincere acts of connection—like saying good morning to colleagues—build trust and comfort. Trust and comfort builds strength and endurance allowing people to handle more difficulty. Success, ultimately, leads to well-being. With this approach, every team member shares the responsibility for a collective strength greater than any single person could achieve alone.

The intriguing constant across these three paradoxes is tension. It's harder to be part of a collective than to be an island. We want autonomy but must surrender parts of it for high performance. Tension. We want process and clarity but require coordination and cooperation. Tension. We want personal well-being but need to build collective well-being. Tension. This work is hard, but personal experience has taught me that diving headfirst into that tension and successfully forging interdependence, cooperation, and collective well-being is the only path to great joy, lasting legacy, and profound fulfillment.