Meet Marianne Lewis, Dean of the Carl H. Lindner College of Business and co-author of the breakthrough book from the Harvard Business Review Press, Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems in this Encore Episode from Summer 2022.
In this Encore Episode from Summer 2022, meet Marianne Lewis, Dean of the Carl H. Lindner College of Business and co-author of the breakthrough book from the Harvard Business Review Press, Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems in this Encore Episode from Summer 2022.
"An insightful and inspiring book on using "both/and" thinking to make more creative, flexible, and impactful decisions in a world of competing demands.
Life is full of paradoxes. How can we each express our individuality while also being a team player? How do we balance work and life? How can we improve diversity while promoting opportunities for all? How can we manage the core business while innovating for the future?"
About Marianne
Marianne W. Lewis is dean and professor of management at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati. She previously served as dean of Cass (now Bayes) Business School at City, University of London. A thought leader in organizational paradoxes, she explores tensions surrounding leadership and innovation. Lewis has been recognized among the world’s most-cited researchers in her field (Web of Science) and received the Paper of the Year award (2000) and Decade Award (2021) from the Academy of Management Review. Her work also appears in media outlets, such as Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Newsweek. Her latest book Both/And Thinking is published by Harvard Business School Press. Lewis earned her MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, and her PhD from the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky.
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.
Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2023 for the third year in a row.
Michael is also the president of Maven Media, producing a network of leading trade podcasts, including Canada's top retail industry podcast_,_ The Voice of Retail. He produces and co-hosts Remarkable Retail with best-selling author Steve Dennis, now ranked one of the top retail podcasts in the world.
Based in San Francisco, Global eCommerce Leaders podcast explores global cross-border issues and opportunities for eCommerce brands and retailers.
Last but not least, Michael is the producer and host of the "Last Request Barbeque" channel on YouTube, where he cooks meals to die for - and collaborates with top brands as a food and product influencer across North America.
Michael LeBlanc 00:05
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
On this episode, meet Marianne Lewis, co-author of the breakthrough book from the Harvard Business Review Press, ‘Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems’.
Marianne Lewis 00:24
In the work that we've done with lots of colleagues, and we have colleagues globally, we find that there are three factors in the world that intensify the experience of tensions, meaning, are-, the likelihood you're going to feel caught in a tug of war and there are three things it's change, scarcity, and plurality, right, the faster tomorrow-, today becomes tomorrow, that kind of speed, you're talking about scarcity, that feeling that you have less to work with and more-, higher expectations and plurality means multiple stakeholders, and we are in the perfect storm. So I don't think it's surprising at all, that, as you said, it feels unprecedented. I agree and it might just keep, you know, moving in that direction that this is the new norm.
Michael LeBlanc 01:10
Let's listen to my exclusive interview with Marianne, right now.
Marianne, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
Marianne Lewis 01:18
Hi, I'm doing well, Michael, so glad to be with you.
Michael LeBlanc 01:21
Well, thanks for joining me. Where am I finding you today?
Marianne Lewis 01:24
I am in my home base. It's Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Michael LeBlanc 01:28
Fantastic. Well, I'm here to-, we're here to talk about your, your new book hot off the shelves available today, but before we do that, let's, let's talk about you tell us a little bit about yourself, your personal, professional journey and your academic focus as a researcher.
Marianne Lewis 01:45
Great, well, thank you. I am an academic. I'm a professor of Management and Leadership. I started my career at the University of Cincinnati, and then ended up actually as a Dean in London at the City University of London for four years and then returned just recently back to Cincinnati to be Dean of the Lindner College of Business here. In terms of my research, I really started by studying automation and then I looked, shifted to innovation in product development and some other realms, but across these different topics, of focus of my work was this underlying theme of tensions. I just saw them everywhere. Leaders grappling with competing demands, feeling paralyzed, caught in tug of wars, and I kept hearing this common language and very early in my career, I did a deep dive into the idea of the concept of paradox, which has been around for a very long time as in 1000s of years, from Greek philosophers to Lao Tzu, and that just,
Michael LeBlanc 02:52
Who is it, is it Barry, Barry Schwartz, the Paradox of Choice when I think of a book with that-
Marianne Lewis 02:57
Yes, that's a, it's a great example Barry's book, the Paradox of Choice and it's been-, I mean, Barry's a good example, as long as this, this concept has been around. It's really much more recent that we've seen it in business and organizational studies, but it's fascinating to me, looking at tensions as paradox changes the way we think.
Michael LeBlanc 03:19
Interesting. Now, you did skip over one element, you're a Fulbright Scholar. I wanted to talk to you about your-, your journey. Did you always want to be an academic and how did you find your way into the work you do today, whether you know, the old saying, Yogi Berra, right, when you come to a fork in the road, take it, tell me about that a little bit?
Marianne Lewis 03:37
No, it's a great question. I am an academic brat. By that I mean, my father, who was still alive, but he was an academic, for other accomplished academics at Stanford, Harvard and INSEAD. And so, my rebellion, Michael, was I was not going to be an academic. I was going to be a practitioner, I was going to do business instead of study business and when I get into my MBA at Indiana at the Kelley School, I, I realized I was focusing at least as much if not quite a bit more on how they were teaching and these underlying theories, then on the what, and so as all my MBA colleagues, were starting to look for their Wall Street internships, I decided, You know what I'm going to take this summer and work with a faculty member on research and sure enough, I realized sometimes you know, the apple doesn't fall far, and it ended up happening, and I've loved it.
Marianne Lewis 04:33
It's been a wonderful career. And the Fulbright was actually an interesting opportunity. I left for my Fulbright in 2014 to write this book and you know, serendipity happens, and I ended up being a dean in London and so I put this book on the back burner for a while to really actually practice what I profess and practice leading, and I love it. I mean, it's very hard. I mean, anybody you talk to on leadership will say you live in, swim in tensions, but it felt, it feels good to, you know, manage my own tension between theory and practice. I think it makes me better at both, or at least it makes me learn.
Michael LeBlanc 05:13
Yeah, we don't have to go-, We don't have to go far in our lives or professional, professional lives or personalized defined paradox. So that's why I was so interested in and looking forward to our conversation. So, the new book with your co-author Wendy Smith, is ‘Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems’. Tell me about your co-author for, for a few minutes.
Marianne Lewis 05:33
Oh, Wendy Smith is tremendous. Wendy and I met when she was actually finishing her PhD at Harvard Business School and realize we were both seeing paradoxes everywhere at the time, she was studying major changes at IBM, and how they were managing innovation, both bold innovations for tomorrow, as well as keeping the trains running today and we started collaborating, and that was 20 years ago. We've, we've obviously worked with other colleagues along the way, but always ended up being really primary co authors for each other and she is at the University of Delaware, now.
Michael LeBlanc 06:13
Talk about the tradecraft of the book, you mentioned it earlier that you kind of got to put it on hold, but how did you approach writing the book, bringing it to life? I think I couldn't find another book. You're a contributor, but is this your first book and so take me through a little bit of the tradecraft and why you thought there was finally space on the shelf for it and, and importantly, who did you write the book for who, is this an academic tomb or is this something that should be on the desks of of leaders from-
Marianne Lewis 06:40
You ask great questions, Michael. I mean, you are right, it is, it is both mine and Wendy's first book that isn't a non-academic book, you might find us. We did an Oxford Handbook and some other pieces, but we've always been academics. So, we've been publishing for the top academic journals for 20 plus years and in fact, the first book I said, I probably wrote two thirds of it, and 2014 was an academic book, but what we've seen, particularly over the past, probably two to three years is the language of paradox and both/and all over the place. We've seen Deloitte's using it, a Barclays. Wendy is a Yale graduate, and they actually they use both/and in their marketing and we realize, okay, a lot of people are starting to see what we've seen in the practitioner world, but it's one thing to use the words, it's another thing to know what they mean, and how you approach it.
Marianne Lewis 07:37
And how do you go beyond a label to actually the practice of both/and thinking and so we felt like Michael, it was the time there was, you know, as you said, space on the shelf, because people were needing a deeper dive into the how, and what does it really mean to be both/and thinker, how does the How to paradoxes play into our lives, or our leadership, our organizations, so we took this as a time, I, we completely rewrote what I wrote in 2014, to your question about audience and said, actually, we had a couple of questions. Our first question was, you know, clearly, we're business professors. So, we've been studying paradoxes, competing demands, tensions, in organizations, in business leadership.
Marianne Lewis 08:22
And as we've been doing that throughout, we see them in our own lives. We've spoken with many a leader who ends up turning the table and starting to talk about the tensions between work and family, self and other, we get into all sorts of much, much more individual personal tensions and it really shifted our focus in this book to say, it needs to be for everyone and it's more of a it's a big idea book, rather than a business book and that challenged Wendy and me, too, in our language, in our skills. I mean, as I said, we've written for the academic journals, this is not an academic book. It's not meant for that. It really is meant to say, you felt them, you know what the tug of war feels like, it can feel paralyzing, it can feel polarizing. How do you, how do you navigate, how do you work through and that's what we're hoping this is doing. It's bringing some life and practicalities to some language we're hearing increasingly,
Michael LeBlanc 09:22
it's such an, it's such a fascinating time. I'd call it unprecedented, maybe it's unprecedented. I don't know, we all, in our generations, all think everything's unprecedented, you know, coming out of the COVID era where you know, leadership and leaders discovered suddenly they could make decisions much quicker. I talked to lots of CEOs and said, oh, my goodness, if I could only bottle that, that thing in my organization, you know, we were making decisions that would take us years and we were making them in days and you know, right now, I think of the paradox of the work from home, restructuring of work and you know, there's lots of pros and cons or paradoxes within that framework. Take us to this central premise of the book: the tensions, the paradoxes, you know, they're nothing new. We, I, mean, you know, we're dealing with high inflation, low unemployment, they, they're with us writ large, but take us through the central premise of the book and, and this both/and thinking model?
Marianne Lewis 10:13
Sure. So I'll go one step a little bit before and because I think you've started to touch on it, Michael is, in the work that we've done with lots of colleagues, and we have colleagues globally, we find that there are three factors in the world that intensify the experience of tensions, meaning, are-, the likelihood you're going to feel caught in a tug of war and there are three things it's change, scarcity, and plurality, right, the faster tomorrow-, today becomes tomorrow, that kind of speed, you're talking about scarcity, that feeling that you have less to work with and more-, higher expectations and plurality means multiple stakeholders, and we are in the perfect storm. So, I don't think it's surprising at all, that, as you said, it feels unprecedented. I agree and it might just keep, you know, moving in that direction that this is the new norm.
Marianne Lewis 11:07
But when I talk about paradoxes, Wendy and I think about this, if if we think about, say what feels like a dilemma, right that we do we focus on hitting our targets today, or do we focus on bold innovation for tomorrow, right, that's a classic one that she and I both studied in various ways. That today and tomorrow short-term, long-term Innovation, performance, we don't, we tend to think about those as either or we pull them apart and are trying to do a classic kind of formal logic, let's weigh the pros and cons and decide today, what are we going to focus on and sometimes there's real value to just good either/or approach. The problem in this case, though, is that those are really in our view two sides of the same coin, so the term paradox, the way we simply define it, is more, it's interwoven contradictions that persist.
Marianne Lewis 12:03
So these are-, think yin yang, right, that the light informs the dark, it actually shapes each other, they flow into one another, we could make a decision today that you know what, we got to hit the targets, let's just buckle down and focus on production and efficiencies, but we're going to have to face the same question tomorrow or the next day and say, boy, there's a lot of technological change, maybe we better be putting serious investment into innovation and we're going to we're going to juggle with both sides of those coins ongoing and really, the if you think about that particular one as a paradox, right, our day to day functions are exactly that what funds, the basic R&D, the more radical risky innovation that we're going to do, you've got to be paying the bills and at the same time, those radical innovations are going to become your fundamental foundational products of tomorrow. So that today, and tomorrow really plays off of each other and we could do the same with lots of other paradoxes that we see quite a bit, you know, global, local. You and I were talking about a little earlier, the social and financial demands on firms and on our lives, self and other. I mean, it's a long list, but the difference to us is, how do you move beyond thinking of this as a trade off to a paradox and that changes the way we play with both sides and their interconnections.
Michael LeBlanc 13:30
It's so interesting, because it reminds me of, of interviews I've done recently, Dan Pink, ‘The Power of Regret’, soon, you interviewed last week, the Benefits of Friction, you know, us retailers-
Marianne Lewis 13:39
Yeah, wonderful.
Michael LeBlanc 13:40
Always taking friction out, right, but he's saying, hey, you know, it's not such a bad thing to slow things down every now and then, it feels like what you're saying is that there's a power in mastering these contradictions and recognizing the reality talk more about that and, you know, what are some of the tools that you can, you can give the folks listening can say, you know, I think I can, I can apply this what, you know, call it a framework or a rubric or a tool, what advice do you have?
Marianne Lewis 14:05
Well, I think the first piece is, I think the first part of your question is, you know, the power behind it. We see, paradox is a double-edged sword, right, they can be absolutely paralyzing to people, how in the world do I, you know, work through the tug of war, but they can-, that creates friction, we see again, and again, is really positive and powerful.
Now, it might be uncomfortable, initially, but it's how you work through that, that friction. The example I often think of is one of my early studies with, with Paul Polman at Unilever when he was developing their sustainable living plan and he would talk all the time about you know, okay, so our-, the goals were very clear for him. We're going to double our profit and cut in half our environmental footprint, and everybody would say, you know, Paul, it doesn't work that way, right. And he said, no, we touch 2 billion consumers a day, it has to work that way. So, then the question is how, alright, we're announcing a new product, say we're going into-, into a community in Africa. Now the question is, how, what's that going to do for the market, how are you going to raise sales, how are you going to grow profit and at the same time, how will you reduce water, reduce energy, manage transportation, pollution on that side, and he was always trying to push, get the tensions on the table, he would say, if people would come to me with a clear cut, oh, we do X, he would say, go, go look harder.
Marianne Lewis 15:34
Tell me the opposing ways that we could do it tell me every challenge. And it feels uncomfortable, because you might have conflict, you might have to have real debate, but the view is, and I completely agree with Polman on this, we don't have our best selves, if we don't have the variety of options on the table that really push us out of our current thinking.
So, you asked about the tools, we develop something from a lot of work that we've done, and others, we call in the book, The Paradox System and we really think there are four tools for just sake of memory, we think about them as ABCD. A is assumptions, B is boundaries, C is comfort, and D is dynamic and if I do it just simply, the A for assumptions is about, we need to change our mindset. What do we assume is going on and how do we question that right off the bat and the biggest step to this is we have to start changing the questions we ask when we say-, when we when we build out an either-or question, we say well, should we focus on sustainability or on profit, you've immediately limited your possibilities. Just by the way you frame that question.
Marianne Lewis 16:45
In terms of B, which is boundaries, then it's how do you put a framework around that so you're holding them together, you know, I'm using the Polman, Unilever example here, but right, he had very specific and obviously, it was a great team at Unilever, they have metrics on both the profitability and the sustainability side. So, every time you went into a new product, or a new growth strategy, you had to complete in a framework both sides of that equation, to demonstrate it held them together.
Marianne Lewis 17:17
The C is for comfort, and that is because tensions are emotional, they're uncomfortable. And our defensive reaction when we're uncomfortable is to go for something simple, clear and focused, which is 9 times out of 10 going to be give me an either or so I can move on. It's just, it's short lived and it's limited. And then the D for Dynamics is, you know, we really push ourselves and others to think about dynamic balancing, because paradoxes aren't going away. You might be solving a problem, but it's, it's not permanent. So dynamics is about how do you consistently and continually experiment, push the envelope, you know, with Polman and a lot of other leaders we talked to they say one of the challenges of being a paradoxical leader is that people can say, I don't know, are you sending mixed messages are you waffling and the trick that we've seen from a variety of leaders is, they're very clear, it is both and I'm gonna keep reminding you, we are doing multiple things simultaneously and today, I might say, I need you to focus on X. But I need you to understand you're focusing on X because tomorrow we're probably going to focus on Y and they go together and so it's a consistency but for us the paradox system is a set of tools that we found really helps leaders’ teams and organizations work through, navigate these paradoxes.
Michael LeBlanc 18:44
In the book, you've got several examples, of course, being here in Canada I wanted to ask you particularly about the Fogo Island example, take us through that.
Marianne Lewis 18:52
The Fogo Island example is just beautiful. Zita Cobb was a study that actually Wendy did with another colleague and Cobb was really looking at okay, so how do I-, how do I help a community as people are really leaving Fogo Island, it needs an economic rejuvenation, but a community very proud of their roots, understandably so a really rich tradition from cod fishing to their crafts and so they had, had lots of debates. I mean, they had started things on Fogo Island like, you know, a scholarship program and Zita had started this herself but then what she found is, wait a minute, it was encouraging for the people of Fogo Island but then they left to go to college, and they didn't come back, I need to do something on the island itself.
So, the Fogo Island Inn is just to me it is a symbol of paradox. She built this remarkably luxurious Inn on what she calls one of the four corners of the globe and it is a combination of the most beautiful high tech, extravagantly luxurious elements and at the same time, it is, there-, all the crafts from the bedsheets and comforters to the art on the walls is all local, the local members of the community actually serve as hosts for the guests that come to the Fogo Island Inn and it's this blending of the future and the past and the global possibilities because people come from around the world to the inn and meet the locals and as the locals are sharing just the power of that local community and its traditions. So, I think it's just a really beautiful example of the ebb and flow of past and present and traditions and innovation.
Michael LeBlanc 20:43
Even-, even the modern architecture that's nestled into the rugged beauty of.
Marianne Lewis 20:47
Oh, it's so beautiful. You've seen it too?
Michael LeBlanc 20:49
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, my brother's actually been there and-
Marianne Lewis 20:51
Oh, really.
Michael LeBlanc 20:52
Has gone and it was one of his kind of bucket list goals as it is for me, actually. So, let's talk about something else that worked. I don't know, less so. Brexit, let's talk about Brexit. Was there a better way, I mean, it became a very, I here's another word or framework you have polarized, well, it wound up one way. I mean, there has been a Brexit. Was there a better way, I mean, you, you were living there. So, you've got, you've got some very hands on and you lived in that environment, What's your, if they would have had your book then would they be in a better place now?
Marianne Lewis 21:26
Well, and it's interesting because I write in the book of an experienced Mar-, Mario Barroso. So, who is the president of the European Commission came and spoke at my business school and when I was there, and it was, it was just after the vote, and I just, I had a wonderful dinner a private dinner with him and some others afterwards and, and hearing his take on it was fascinating as well. I mean, so, you know, obviously, hindsight is 2020 and we can look back, but there are a lot of parallels for other political polarization we see. I mean, I was a newbie, I had started this, my dean's role six months before and, you know, Brexit, the vote is starting to rev up and I am talking to anybody and everybody I can to understand what's at stake here.
Marianne Lewis 22:08
What are, what are the issues, or how are, and oh, it was complex, Michael, I mean, they're, the complexities, the nuances, the-, and the emotions behind it and similar to some things like, like the US political situation, it, it had polarized to a very simple, clear, we're leaving or we're staying. Right and it and the simplicity around both of those completely negated. What would become I mean, I still think it's 1000s upon, 1000s of pages of contracts that they're still working through and I'm not saying necessarily what the vote happened, but it wasn't, it-, they never got to a very nuanced, complicated, interesting discussion for the voters let alone within parliament, because it had polarized to this. We are leaving because it's patriotic, versus we're saying for the, for global leadership.
Michael LeBlanc 23:05
It's economic, because it's economics, right?
Marianne Lewis 23:06
Okay. And so I understood from their view that their-, their two different votes and so we are walking after Mario Barroso had spoken and I'm walking kind of between them and one of the gentlemen says to Manuel Barroso, he says, well, I mean, those people who voted to leave are ignorant, racist, I can't remember the slew of expletives to use and I'm sitting here next to the other gentleman who I know was that person and wasn't anything that this man just said. I mean, just nothing, it was and without even batting an eye. Jose Manuel Barroso just looks at him and smiles and said, it is such a complicated issue. I'm sorry, we couldn't have had richer discussions. Let's have that conversation more at dinner and as he said it I thought I was gonna have a fist fight between them and instead, the other gentleman smiled and laughed, and he said something like 'Spoken like a true statesman' and then we proceeded to have a really intellectual, fascinating and challenging dinner conversation, but it made me think, I would like, I would hope that we can open ourselves to have more of those conversations because there's a, it's a rare political decision. That isn't complicated, right, that isn't nuanced.
Marianne Lewis 23:06
Right, and economics and it was, it was much more than that. I mean, the more people I spoke to about it, the more I thought, I would love to hear us have a real debate around all of the complexities and nuances. This isn't us. It wasn't as simple as it was and the story I tell in this book, I just oh my gosh, I remember it like it was yesterday to two of the people who had helped me just better understand that the intricacies of Brexit were two of my board members at it was the Cass Business School, it was recently named Bayes Business School. So, and these two leaders were on both sides of the debate and were incredibly brilliant business leaders and could explain lots of reasons and complications of why they felt that, it-, when you have to come to a vote. This is why they wanted one or the other.
Michael LeBlanc 25:30
They are by, they are by their nature, right? Very few clear cut. Yes, everyone wants action on climate change, but
Marianne Lewis 25:39
Of course.
Michael LeBlanc 25:39
You know, there's lots of stakeholders and lots of different ways to approach it and now, I have to ask you, were you convinced one way or the other, I mean, you can you're now sitting safely in Cincinnati. So were you convinced one way or the other, was that the right thing to do or did you even form an opinion?
Marianne Lewis 25:58
I mean, because I don't know that I formed a full opinion. I mean, I thought it was very risky to leave because of the host of economic, but also very human-, I mean, there was so many reasons to stay, including the original reasons of why the European Union was developed in the first place, which was, which was much more about political stability, and economic stability in the region to avoid what, you know, world war three, but I don't know that I would take a stance on that, because I certainly I did understand the very real concerns by a number of people who felt that it was time to leave and, and some did that, under the great hopes that it could help mobilize needed change in the European Union, whether that happens or not, is a different story, too.
Michael LeBlanc 26:46
Yeah, it feels-, feels like there's another actor that's pretty prominent and driving change in that right now.
Marianne Lewis 26:50
I think so.
Michael LeBlanc 26:52
Let's bring this conversation home for the retailer. So-
Marianne Lewis 26:54
Sure.
Michael LeBlanc 26:54
You know, listen, they're constantly we're constantly vexed by customers who want everything won't pay for, say one thing, do something different gimme, you've given us a great framework ABCD, but give me any words of wisdom or advice for the retailers listening about how they can approach this paradox within your model.
Marianne Lewis 27:13
I think if there were three kinds of steps to take, and I've seen them in a variety of ways, I'll give you an example in a minute, but I would say you need to change the question. You know, whatever debate it is that feels like a tug of war, find an "and" question there, then separate and connect, can you pull apart both elements and really dig down to understand the value of each side, and their limitations have taken to an extreme, and then find their connections and then lastly, take decisions that let you stay agile and continue to learn and adapt. The retail example and it's-, I'm stretching it maybe to be retail, but my, my board chair in London was Muhtar Kent, who at the time was the chair of Coca Cola, CEO and Chair of Coca Cola and one of the paradoxes that we would often talk about is the global-local tension.
Michael LeBlanc 28:07
Sure.
Marianne Lewis 28:07
Because, you know, Coke is, was, they're always working to be the-, they're one of the most visible brands in the world, right, leveraging that scale, making sure that they're being authentic and if you've ever been to the Coca Cola Museum in Atlanta, you know, they have hundreds, if not 1000s of flavors and tastes because local variations matter and being respectful, right.
So how do you pull apart okay, we want to make sure that, we want to leverage our global brand so that we respect, honor and support local variations. Right, he would, he would talk about different ways that you could be both because he didn't want to ever water down the global red can and at the same time, wanted to make sure whether it was their supply chains, their retailers on the ground, or the actual tastes of the product worked in the local markets and how do you play those and he would, you know, pull those apart and really think about what's the value of the of the brand, what's the value of scale and what's the limitation, if you take it too far, who do you, who do you negate, who do you marginalize and at the same on the flip side, yes, local matters, and how do you build those variations, but if you take that too far, you've lost the opportunities to build efficiencies that keep it priced within range, whatever the market, right, so playing, but, both of those, and you know, I love a leader like Muhtar and so many others. They have this confident humility that yes, I'm going to make a decision today and we're probably going to adjust tomorrow because times change quickly, the shelf-, everything from shelfing to supply chains to how we market in the metaverse. It's all going to continue changing, so we're going to stay agile in that process.
Michael LeBlanc 29:55
Well, my guest is Marianne Lewis. The book is, ‘Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems’ available wherever you love to buy your books.
Marianne, what's the best way to keep up with what you-, what you're working on, what you're doing, are you a LinkedIn person, what's the best way to follow what you're doing?
Marianne Lewis 30:11
I am on-, I'm on all-, LinkedIn, I would say is probably the best or Twitter. You can find the book on Amazon, but really any of your local bookstores as well and I just appreciate the chance, Michael, to speak with you, great questions, always provoke my thinking.
Michael LeBlanc 30:26
Well, it's a great discussion. I really was looking forward to it and I wish you continued success and recommend, I've-, I've had the chance to have a copy of the early release of the book and I'd recommend it to anybody listening.
Marianne Lewis 30:37
Thank you very much.
Michael LeBlanc 30:38
Essential, essential, essential reading in these times, as in others. So once again, listen, have a great rest of your day and, and weekend. And thanks again for joining me on The Voice of Retail podcast.
Marianne Lewis 30:49
Great. Thank you, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc 30:50
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure to click and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, so new episodes will land automatically twice a week and check out my other retail industry media properties, the Remarkable Retail podcast, Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and The Food Professor podcast with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my all-new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbecue with new episodes each and every week.
I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company, and Maven Media. And if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co.
Have a safe week everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
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