The Problem with Zero-Sum Thinking 

 

Leadership in higher education rarely presents clean choices. Too often, it asks you to protect multiple values at once—access and excellence, speed and shared governance, and innovation and tradition. When resources feel tight and expectations keep rising, those tensions can start to feel like forced tradeoffs. Over time, it becomes easy to assume that moving one priority forward means another must fall behind.  

But as Academic Impressions CEO Amit Mrig explores in his latest article, this kind of zero-sum thinking, while understandable, is not helpful for solving the most important problems. When decisions feel binary, leaders often feel cornered into choosing between values they care deeply about. They become too locked into the defense of their territory instead of working to solve a shared issue. 

“Both/and” thinking, on the other hand, offers a different starting point. 

It doesn’t avoid responsibility or delay decisions—instead, it expands the thinking before narrowing the choice. It asks leaders to hold tension long enough to see more of the system—and more possible paths forward. 

Think of it as a design mindset applied to leadership:

• Diverge before you converge. 
• Explore possibilities before committing. 
• Resist false binaries long enough to surface better options. 

A helpful reframe: If the choice feels binary, you’re probably too early in the thinking process.

Reflection: Notice the False Binary 

Either on your own or with Sophia in the My Path section of your account, take two minutes to reflect: 

• Where have you recently felt pulled into zero-sum thinking? 
• What might be true on both sides of that tension? 
• What question are you not asking yet that could expand your options? 

Remember: Slowing down the thinking doesn’t mean slowing down the decision. It means improving the quality of what comes next. 

This week’s newsletters will look at what happens when conditions don’t support expansive thinking—and how psychological safety and decision clarity determine whether leaders hear the full range of perspectives or only the safest ones.