The Next Next Common Sense
the value of the coin. Throughout the chat, Dylan listens carefully and his continual head nodding seems to indicate that he understands. “So, do you see the difference between a nickel and a dime?” asks his father. “Yeah. A nickel is 5 pennies and a dime is 10 pennies,” he answers proudly. “Good. So the next time Chad asks you to pick a coin, which one are you going to pick?” The father’s synthesis works if the game is to be played only one time. Younger brother and father both gain respect. Older brother learns not to tease the younger. But if there are multiple plays of the same game, that changes everything. Dylan clearly is the wisest of the three, since he is accumulating the nickels. The role of accumulator was more important to him than the cost of being labeled as stupid. In common parlance this is known as being dumb like a fox. Intel succeeded by capitalizing on the right role at the right time. Synthesis - we make DRAM - would have been the trap of death. For Lisa, synthesis - I am my company - is what got her into the 11 a.m. crisis. This pattern plays out in contemporary organizations when people resist being reduced to singular roles or identities. Consider how the dig- ital marketing specialist who is also a talented storyteller, or the finance analyst who has deep customer insights, might bristle at being confined to narrow functional silos that don’t recognize their multiplicity. When organizations force this kind of simplification—”you’re just a marketer” or “stick to the numbers”—they lose the creative potential that emerges from role multiplicity. The most innovative companies now deliberately create contexts where multiple roles are not just tolerated but encouraged. Organizations like IDEO, the design firm, actively recruit “T-shaped” individuals— people with deep expertise in one area (the vertical bar of the T) and the ability to collaborate across disciplines (the horizontal bar). This approach explicitly values multiplicity while recognizing that different situations call for different aspects of a person’s capabilities.
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