At work, someone will eventually say: “Well, we have two options: we can do A or we can do B.”

It sounds decisive. It sounds like leadership. It is also, more often than not, wrong.

Either/or framing is tidy and satisfying. It makes a meeting feel productive, a tradeoff feel noble. But in the long arc of building anything that lasts — a team, a product, a company — it almost never holds. You might start with either A or B, but you end up needing both. The hard part isn’t choosing between them; it’s learning to hold them in tension, switching emphasis as the context shifts.

We like binaries because they suggest clarity:

• Authoritative vs. Consultative
• High Volume vs. High Quality
• Foundation Building vs. Path Seeking
• Expansion vs. Simplification

You’ve probably seen these arranged into a consultant’s favorite device: the two-by-two matrix. A useful toy for short-term decisions — but dangerous when taken literally.

The trap isn’t picking the wrong quadrant. It’s believing you only get to pick one. Real progress is less like navigating a static map and more like hiking a mountain in shifting weather. Sometimes you move east, then veer north. Sometimes you camp. Sometimes you retrace your steps. And often, you carry both A and B in your pack, switching tools as the terrain demands.

This isn’t fence-sitting. It’s recognizing that good strategy rarely lives in absolutes. Yes, commit. Yes, focus. But don’t confuse the constraints of a moment with the demands of the whole journey.

The question isn’t “Which one?” It’s “When do we need each?”