Case Study: The Fox and the Grapes

Little children and many managers and executives have a characteristic behavior that I call if-I-can't-have-it-exactly-the-way-I-want-it-then-I-don't-want-it-at-all thinking. I'm sure you've seen this behavior play out—it's usually characterized by an extreme the-way-I-want-it position and an utterly unrealistic alternative position. Management guru Aesop wrote about this behavior roughly 2,600 years ago in his ground-breaking case study "The Fox and the Grapes".

In Aesop's case study, a fox comes across grapes growing on a vine high in a tree. As is characteristic of this behavior, the fox repeatedly tries to execute exactly one solution—that of jumping from the ground up toward the grapes—before stopping with the justification that 'the grapes must be sour anyway'. Management students studying this case study are introduced to the traditional point of the story ("It is easy to despise what you cannot get.") while opportunities to explore the actions of the fox more deeply are often passed by—in particular, the fox's insistence on pursuing a single solution to the problem.

This oversight is both surprising and unfortunate because the growing emphasis on 'execution over strategy' in popular management literature downplays the importance of a robust search for alternative solutions before execution sets in. Management, as practiced today, is grounded in a style of thinking that begins with the assumption that all possible solutions to a problem are visible at the outset and that the management challenge is in deciding which alternative to pursue. In Aesop's case study, the fox—spiritual kin to many a modern-day CEO—assumes that the only solution is the first solution he "sees", and he proceeds to execute that solution with abandon, to final failure. Alternative solutions—climbing, ladder, ax—are not uncovered, let alone explored. The fox walks away hungry; value is left on the table; the point is taken; the beast is dead...

For the dip-wits out there who require an appeal to authority in order to establish credibility (i.e. for those who can't think for themselves) this is a rough take on Roger Martin's "design thinking" as outlined in "Designing in Hostile Territory" in the Rotman Magazine, Spring/Summer 2006 (here's a link although Google assures me you can search for it and find it, too).

-- Bandit