The Three Tensions: Winning the Struggle to Perform Without Compromise

by Dominic Dodd, Ken Favaro

A manager argued that he could either increase his business unit's margins or its sales, but not both. His chief executive reminded him of the time when people lived in mud huts and faced the stark choice between light and punch a hole in the side of your hut and you let the daylight in but also the cold, or block up all the openings and you stay warm but sit in darkness. The invention of glass made it possible to overcome the dilemma—to let in the light but not the cold. How then, he asked his manager, will you resolve your dilemma between no sales or no margin improvement? Where is the glass?
— From the Introduction "To win, leaders have to push their companies beyond trade-offs. They must find strong growth at premium returns, not one or the other. They must deliver great results today and build for the future at the same time, not push for earnings that can't be sustained. The Three Tensions is about having both at the same time, more of the time. I recommend it to any manager serious about winning."
—James Kilts, former chairman, CEO, and president, The Gillette Company "Leadership can't be just about telling people what you expect of them. The Three Tensions sets out a range of helpful tactics leaders can adopt to really engage their people in the search for good performance on many fronts."
—Andrew Cosslett, chief executive, InterContinental Hotels Group PLC " The Three Tensions speaks to fundamental management issues, perhaps the most fundamental. Managers looking for new ideas on how to improve performance will find it very stimulating. I found my own thinking very much influenced by it."
—John Roberts, professor of economics, strategic management, and international business, Stanford Business School

Genres: Business, Self Help

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Alberto Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great work about not parts of business but the interconnectivity between three important tensions all business leaders face. The bottom line recommendations are both sensible and brilliant! All managers should read this book!

[Emmanuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buen libro, no crazy good, pero burn libro. La idea de %aciertos en un período de años es buena, viendo la dificultad de crecer y ser rentable, así como hacerlo sostenido, estuvo bien, buen libro.

[David Glad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent ideas, such as classical management thought (a business should focus on customers and their satisfaction rather than products/services), but I thought the book tried to push too hard on the idea that it is more a dilemma on how a business should perform against constraints (short-term versus long-term, etc).

Worth noting the passage on how businesses can be success by either diversifying or being narrow in its focus as well as how some businesses can be structured vertically (more for financial benefits to be a low cost producer) or horizontally (trying to offer a complete solution across many business units of the company). Book briefly touches on the idea featured elsewhere that instead of doing various mergers for "synergy" purposes, sometimes a strategic partnership is better to reap the rewards and a much cheaper exit if the benefits proved to be wishful thinking.

Perhaps on the stereotype of being results-driven, also nicely said that top management should be telling managers how they want results, rather than "what" (some specific number) results they want that is subject to much chicanery.

I found it quite ironic that BP is cited as one of the visionary companies that has a model to be followed between being more consistent on capital spending (not a bad idea, mind you) throughout boom and bust cycles and other ideas on running the business. (Book was written in 2007, but even mid-decade there was a rather nasty Texas refinery explosion in 2005 that dominated airwaves and affected the price of oil and, starting in 2006 and ending in 2008, according to Wikipedia. So costly -- both financially/environmentally and in reputation -- safety violations seemed to be quite the norm heading into the Gulf disaster.)

Again, it is a refreshing idea of trying to think of ways to achieve objectives (in substantive form) that are normally considered mutually exclusive.

[Thomas Burky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I cautiously recommend this book. I say cautious because even though it strives to make the point that executives are focusing on the wrong metrics rather than focusing on solving customers' (new and existing) problems, the point is lost among Mr. Dodd's attempts to implement another meaningless metric he calls "batting average". However, Mr. Dodd does an excellent job of describing how the existing financial metrics are misleading and are often manipulated for short term gains. Observers and practitioners can recognize this unfolding in their own companies - and beware.

[Devin Partlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great stuff! I just wished you didn't need an MBA to keep up with all the terms and acronyms. This book gets penalized .5 stars because of the extra work it takes for a layman like me to understand.

3.5 stars

[Lori Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A should-read book on managing companies for knowledge workers, managers, executives, and entrepreneurs.