Barry Johnson and I had been having breakfast at my favorite B&B in Cleveland when we took a few moments to talk about Polarity Management. Barry Johnson is the Chairman and Chief Thought Leader of Polarity Partnerships. His latest book, And: Volume One—Foundations is available for purchase now.

Barry shares a story from an organization he worked with that had a high value for autonomy in their employees and programs. However, this was leading the isolation and competition between them. They had a new desire to move toward greater integration. But, they used a typical gap analysis and treated the move toward integration as a solution to their problem, rather than a polarity to manage (meaning the polarity between autonomy and integration). This resulted in failed attempts to move toward integration until they began using a polarity management approach.