I had a boss once who had the ability to demand more from others than they demanded from themselves. He pushed the organization by setting high expectations and was educated and knowledgeable enough to get the authority.

People listened to him, and he saw opportunities where others doubted. You can say that he was good at stretching the organization.

I remembered one time when he said a job could be carried out in less time than suggested, and he made the workers go back and rethink and come back with an optimized plan. Three times he did the same thing, and eventually, the time needed to complete the task was significantly shortened.

Reducing outage time at a Power plant saves a lot of money because getting back on the electrical grid is the main purpose.

An organization has a remarkable way of adapting to new situations if it´s done correctly. There is always room for improvement.

However, done in the wrong way, people will lose trust and engagement. If you push too hard. the targets will come across as unreachable and unrealistic.

Instead of being innovated and proactive organizations turn towards more managing leadership. More efforts are put into measuring things instead of addressing the root causes. The root causes are the lack of leadership and the ability to turn up the heat in the organizations. Leadership is like a thermostat versus managing is measuring the temperature.  

When you only recognize the people who fix problems, you will anchor that behavior and proactivity will be lost. I often say that it is good to fix problems, but my heroes are the ones that prevent problem from occurring.

When you only fix problems you will never be better than you were before. If your best was average, then the average is always going to be your best.

To become the best, you need leadership and work with the culture, people, and the things that create leverage. In leadership, this is often referred to as soft skills. More than 80 % of your result is determined by your relations.

My experience is that culture eats structure for breakfast. Still, you need some structure to make sure you are heading in the right direction that the things you plan are get carried out.

The combination of push and pull is powerful, and it is through an evaluated experience you learn when and how you shall apply them.

The important thing to remember though is not overusing, either of them.