Paradox of vertical and horizontal thinking

Andrew Jefford, one of my favorite wine writers, argues in his book “Drinking with the valkyries”  that wine lovers would enjoy wine far more if they stopped thinking vertically, in terms of scores, rankings, winners, and losers, and instead thought horizontally, appreciating difference for its own sake. While horizontal tasting focuses on comparing wines across places, cultures, and expressions, vertical thinking reduces those rich differences into a single hierarchy - such as 100 point scores - that flattens pleasure and meaning. Scoring wines turns diversity into competition, encourages price inflation, branding, status drinking, and shallow ideas of “the best,” and even fuels counterfeiting. Jefford acknowledges that vertical judgment has a limited role in filtering out poorly made or dull wines, but insists it should remain secondary. He argues that true joy in wine comes from embracing its endless variety, tasting each wine as an individual expression of place and craft, and letting difference, not ranking, guide our attention.

When I finished reading it, I thought, Of course! We should try more horizontal thinking. Yet, I felt a little embarrassed about the vertical mindset I often use when buying wine. Even though I praise the diversity of wines to my friends, inside, I often care deeply about wine critics’ scores. I have bought many wines mainly because of the ratings and others’ praise without really thinking about how I would enjoy them. Then, I recognized: When I am disappointed with a wine I chose based on its difference or uniqueness, I feel like I experimented and learned something new. But when I am disappointed with a wine I chose based mostly on the score, I just feel stupid.

As a wine lover, I sometimes organize tastings with friends. Interestingly, now that I am thinking about vertical and horizontal minds, I notice that I choose wines differently—using more of a vertical mind or sometimes a horizontal one—depending on who I am tasting with. With some groups, I sense they would appreciate a wine’s reputation, score, and high price more than anything else. For them, I choose wines with that specific caliber of price or score. And we praise them. We even talk about how we might be influenced by the price. But there are other groups who seem more interested in the differences, nuances, and the real taste. I feel more lively when I can explore horizontal tasting with them. It feels more adventurous, more connected to the true taste of the wine, and simply more fun to find something new and exciting.

Wine tasting in Mosel, Germany

As I reflected on this, my mind moved in another direction but stayed on similar vertical and horizontal concepts—specifically regarding people and leadership, a topic I am deeply familiar with. Working as an executive coach, I have embraced diversity and working with different talents. Nelson Repenning, a professor at MIT Sloan, has spoken about how diversity can increase innovation more effectively. First, Break All the Rules by Gallup argues that the most important common denominator of a great manager is treating people differently based on their talents.

This horizontal mind allows me to see clients’ biases where they use their own strengths as the standard for everyone, ignoring the possibility that someone can be very talented in other areas. In my earlier career, I had a direct report who was not good at aggregating thoughts and putting them into PowerPoint slides in a convincing, logical way. I was frustrated with him. I wanted to help him, so I gave him more opportunities to create presentation slides and gave him direct feedback on them. Now looking back, I wish I could have seen his strengths—which I knew—much more clearly. He was brilliant at creative thinking and had many out-of-the-box ideas for problems. He may not have presented them in the most organized way, but the brilliance of his ideas shined.

However, as I contemplate this topic deeper, my mind moves to the opposite side of the equation. At work, we can unconsciously foster mediocrity, and therefore demotivate high performers, by allowing poor performance to be hidden. I often hear from my coaching clients who regret not addressing the issues of low performers sooner. They hesitated to have difficult conversations or let them go because they were unsure: “What if this person is good at something I haven't recognized yet?” or “He is really bad overall, but there is something he’s good at, too.”

In my career in corporate America, I have seen this pattern and the damage it causes to other team members, which impacted my own career decisions. The two times I decided to leave organizations, the starting point of the decision was when I asked myself, “Why am I here? I belong in a place where I can work with higher performers.” It reminds me of the quote from Jim Collins in Good to Great: "The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving."

If you call this vertical thinking, then I see my preference for it.

My mind went a little further from here. In Korea, there is a concept called ‘a person of a large bowl’ (geureut-i keun saram, 그릇이 큰 사람), and ‘a person of a small bowl’ (geureut-i jageun saram, 그릇이 작은 사람). Most Koreans have heard of these terms and probably used them in conversation, saying things like, “She seems like a person of a large bowl.” This is used when a person’s capacity for leadership is big, they can handle large challenges, and they can achieve big things. I couldn’t find any specific definitions that are universally understood on what “bowl” means—it typically implies capabilities, character, or all of the above. But more importantly, it usually implies that unless there is a miraculous breakthrough, we are stuck with the bowl size we were born with—a pretty extreme fixed mindset. I feel like, having grown up in Korea, I was influenced by this mindset as well. Sometimes my mind still works in this extreme vertical way, seeing someone and not believing they can change.

Here comes the paradox.

I feel that an excessive vertical mind, thinking mostly about excellence, performance, "A-players," and scores, can keep us from seeing things clearly and can pull us into groupthink, a socialized mind. And yet, at the same time, I feel the need to drive for the highest quality, performance, efficiency, and clarity (yes, clarity in another sense). Sharing this feels risky. There is a voice in my head warning me that admitting to this 'vertical' instinct might undermine my credibility. After all, isn't a coach supposed to believe unshakably in human potential? Yet, I want to be honest about how deep these cultural roots go.

I think it is rather comfortable and easy to claim that we have a horizontal view. Can we be honest about our tendency to view things through a vertical lens sometimes? What works about applying this view, and where do we lack a horizontal perspective? How can we embrace both?