The Three Tensions: Winning the Struggle to Perform without Compromise.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Brief article - Book review

The Three Tensions: Winning the Struggle to Perform without Compromise. By Dominic Dodd and Ken Favaro. Jossey-Bass | 250 pages | $27.95.

Authors Dodd and Favaro, consultants at Marakon Associates, developed this book with something of a radical thesis: management that chooses to focus on certain priorities at any point in time (say, growth vs. profitability) may be doomed to mediocrity. The best companies, they find, effectively manage the age-old tensions between growth vs. profitability, short-term vs. long-term issues and deciding to leverage the parts of a company versus emphasizing the whole.

The authors offered a far shorter version of the long-term/short-term tension in a December 2006 article in Financial Executive. Both growth and productivity can be pursued at the same time within each of the three tensions, they write, adding that their view "is that good management means finding ways to overcome performance compromises rather than accept them as inevitable."

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