Understanding the Innovators Trilemma

Justin Craig explains the concept of the trilemma, and how to deal with it effectively.

The trilemma. I love the word, or the concept of a trilemma. That effectively means that people charged with operating optimally in a family business space need to actually juggle multiple dilemmas. If you look up the definition of a trilemma you’ll probably see that you have three available options. Pick two. Because at any point in time you’ll probably be able to pick two and succeed, and the third one is going to have to be not as, not the priority. I’ll give you a couple of examples of trilemmas. In the software industry, or the project development industry, we try to actually say that we need something that is better, cheaper, faster. If you can get those three right, that’s Nirvana. But optimally, or most of the time you’ll say, here, better, quicker, faster – pick two. That’s an interesting way to go about it. Then we look at the family business systems, you say ok, here we’ve got family ownership and also management. Well, gosh, if we can deal with family and ownership, family and management, ownership and management, that’s great, but to do the three. And then I also talk about being ready, willing and capable. Ready and willing is good, willing and capable is good, ready and capable is good, but gee isn’t it nice if we can get really willing, ready and capable people to work in our companies. The trilemma. Have a look at it.