Patterns, brings into focus the beauty of threes. The book is intended to help readers avoid dangerous dichotomous thinking, which according to Keidel, ignores at least one-third of organizational reality. As Keidel points out, it's easy and convenient to think about the world in digital terms: on-off, good-bad, north-south, employee-manager, theory Xtheory Y. While such contrasts are often illuminating, do they tell the whole story or do they, in fact, shield the reader from the whole storyor at least from more of the story than we might have thought about before? Keidel believes so.
Thinking in terms of threes helps overcome a tendency to see the world in black-and-white, cut-and-dried terms. Instead, we begin to think about tradeoffs, three dimensions, and much more. Underlying Keidel's thesis is an important idea: Effective three-variable-thinking does not mean maximizing all three variables or finding a middle point between two ends of a continuum. It means emphasizing one or two variables without neglecting any.
Keidel's foundation for the book is composed of the three variables of autonomy, control, and cooperation. Two-variable thinking in the past has emphasized the tradeoffs between: control and autonomy, topdown management and self-directed work teams, theory X and theory Y, initiating structure and demonstrating consideration for employees, concern for task and concern for people. In Keidel's model, the third option is made explicit: that of a shared, cooperative approachin which both parties can collaborate in defining what should be done. Note that Keidel is not arguing that the third option (cooperation, in this case) is better than the other two; each option remains important and viable depending upon the circumstances. What Keidel does propose is that it is not effective to try to be strong in all three options simultaneously. A leader may choose to pursue one or two of the options, but trying to