Swinging the Pendulum
Alternate between opposing extremes to create focused progress without compromise.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 98%
Swinging the Pendulum replaces continuous compromise with bounded periods of extreme focus. Leaders first define an axis of opposing priorities, such as shipping speed versus product quality or audience growth versus audience quality. The team intentionally optimizes one end, accepting that cracks will appear elsewhere. Once that constraint has materially improved—or the resulting damage becomes more important—the organization swings toward the opposite end. Repeated swings build both capabilities over time while avoiding the inertia of always targeting the middle. Because abrupt reversals can resemble dysfunctional management, leaders must explain the context, trade-offs, expected breakages, and evidence behind each change. The framework works as both an execution model and an information engine: operating at an extreme exposes limitations faster than cautious balance would.
Origin
Discussed by the hosts and Alex Lieberman on Marketing Against The Grain as an operating model attributed to Brandon Chu and Shopify.
Core principles
- 01Focused extremes outperform watered-down compromise.
- 02Every extreme creates costs that eventually require a counter-swing.
- 03Short-term imbalance can produce long-term balance.
- 04Teams need context when priorities reverse.
- 05The appropriate swing depends on the business goal.
How to run it
- 1
Define the axis
Identify two priorities that genuinely compete for the same resources or produce opposing behavior.
Pro tip Use a concrete axis such as speed versus reliability rather than a vague pair of desirable outcomes.
Watch out Do not manufacture an opposition where both priorities can be pursued independently.
- 2
Select the current extreme
Choose the end most likely to resolve the organization's present bottleneck or produce necessary information.
Pro tip Tie the choice to the business's current stage and growth ambition.
Watch out Do not present the selection as a perfect or risk-free strategy.
- 3
Bound the swing
Set a defined burst during which the team will optimize the selected extreme and deprioritize its opposite.
Pro tip Specify what evidence would justify ending or extending the burst.
Watch out An unbounded swing becomes a permanent bias rather than a pendulum.
- 4
Name the expected cracks
List the foreseeable downsides and tell the team which forms of breakage are being accepted temporarily.
Pro tip Distinguish tolerable cracks from non-negotiable safety or ethical limits.
Watch out Hidden trade-offs make later damage look like an unexpected management failure.
- 5
Capture information
Observe what the extreme reveals about capacity, infrastructure, demand, and process limitations.
Pro tip Treat newly exposed constraints as useful evidence, not merely operational pain.
Watch out Do not optimize the metric while ignoring what the experiment teaches.
- 6
Swing with context
Shift toward the opposing priority when evidence shows that it has become the dominant constraint.
Pro tip Explain why the previous choice was rational and why conditions now require a change.
Watch out Unexplained reversals can make leadership appear erratic.
In the wild
Morning Brew could temporarily deprioritize perfect brand consistency and launch 20 creator-led shows. The volume would force the company to expose and build the infrastructure needed to support a large network. After those scaling constraints become visible, the pendulum could swing back toward quality and brand consistency.
→ The company learns what large-scale creator operations require before polishing every individual show.
A product team spends one cycle shipping new capabilities rapidly, accepting manageable reliability debt. Once incidents and maintenance costs become the main constraint, the next cycle emphasizes hardening, testing, and operational reliability.
→ The team develops both innovation capacity and reliability without diluting every cycle into compromise.
Common mistakes
Stopping permanently at one extreme
The mechanism depends on movement. Remaining at one end eventually sacrifices the opposing capability and converts intentional imbalance into dysfunction.
Compromising in the middle
Trying to optimize both priorities equally recreates the uninspired compromise the model is designed to avoid.
Reversing without explanation
Frequent priority changes look arbitrary unless leaders communicate the new evidence, risks, and rationale.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for high-growth organizations that must improve opposing capabilities under constrained resources.
Not ideal for
It is less suitable for steady, predictable businesses that neither need nor tolerate sharp operational swings.
From the transcript
“you are intentionally picking the extremes and you're acknowledging to everybody that you're gonna go back and forth and that you're setting up a culture…”
“it's a force function for information. It forces a lot of information to come at you faster than you would have expected or received if…”
“The first thing you have to do is articulate here are the risks and the downsides of going with what we're going with. We think…”
From the episode
Framework Thinking for Success With Alex Lieberman
Alex Lieberman