Both/And Individualism/Structuralism Policies in Practice

When either/or gets us nowhere, choose both/and instead.

Photo by Simon John-McHaffie on Unsplash

Both/And in Practice: What Actually Works

Last week I argued that the binary between structural causes and individual responsibility is both morally and epistemologically wrong. It’s preventing us from solving problems that desperately need solving.

The response from readers was really positive. Commenters shared versions of the same frustration: you’ve been trying to make this point in conversations for years, only to get pulled back into the binary by people who insist you pick a side.

But diagnosing the problem isn’t the same as solving it. So this week I want to show you what both/and thinking looks like when it’s actually implemented — and why programs that combine structural support with expectations for individual engagement consistently outperform programs that focus on only one dimension.

It’s a nice combo of theory and evidence rolled into one.

KIPP: Both/And Education

The first example is in the realm of education, a place where it should be clear that background structure and individual choice both matter deeply.

KIPP charter schools serve predominantly low-income students of color — 88% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. These are kids facing real structural disadvantages: under-resourced neighborhoods, families without inherited wealth, schools that have historically failed students who look like them.

A purely structural response might say: these kids need more resources. Pour money into the system, reduce class sizes, increase teacher pay.

A purely individual response might say: these kids need to work harder. Raise expectations, demand discipline, stop making excuses.

KIPP said yes to both.

On the structural side, KIPP invests heavily. Students get about 60% more instructional time than traditional public schools through longer days, Saturday sessions, and summer programs. They get high-dosage tutoring. Their families get engagement support. And after graduation, KIPP Forward provides college persistence coaching through the critical first two years when low-income students are most likely to drop out.

On the individual side, KIPP maintains high behavioral expectations. Students, families, and teachers all sign commitment pledges. The culture emphasizes effort, character, and personal accountability. The message isn’t “you’re a victim of circumstances” or “your circumstances don’t matter.” It’s “your circumstances are real, and you can overcome them, and we’re going to help.”

The results: students score 8-12 percentile points higher than control groups in reading and math. One study found that attending both a KIPP middle school and high school increased college completion rates by roughly 19 percentage points for a population that is majority Black and Hispanic students — enough to close the degree completion gap entirely for Black students if scaled nationally.

What’s notable is that analysts examining KIPP’s success keep finding that no single element explains it. It’s not just the longer hours. It’s not just the expectations. It’s the combination: structural investment that makes individual effort actually pay off, paired with individual expectations that make structural investment worthwhile.

KIPP hasn’t been without controversy over the years, in part as a result of leadership issues, but research has consistently demonstrated the effectiveness of the appraoch itself.

Ending Homelessness by Refusing the Binary

Homelessness is a policy area where the binary is most entrenched and therefore (in my humble opinion) the most destructive.

The progressive position tends to emphasize structural causes: housing costs, mental health system failures, lack of social safety nets, the legacy of deinstitutionalization. On this view, homeless individuals are victims of systems beyond their control. The solution is more housing, more services, more resources.

The conservative position tends to emphasize individual responsibility: addiction, bad decisions, unwillingness to follow shelter rules or accept treatment. On this view, many homeless individuals have made choices that landed them on the streets. The solution is enforcing standards, clearing encampments, and stopping the enabling.

Both positions capture something real. And both, when pursued in isolation, have failed spectacularly.

Built for Zero, an initiative now operating in over 100 communities across the United States, takes a different approach.

On the structural side, Built for Zero creates centralized, real-time databases of every homeless individual in a community — not estimates, not annual counts, but actual by-name lists that are updated continuously. This gives communities a genuine map of their local landscape: who needs help, what kind of help they need, what’s working and what isn’t. It coordinates resources across agencies that typically don’t talk to each other. It treats the problem as a systems challenge requiring systems solutions.

On the individual side, Built for Zero emphasizes high-touch, person-by-person engagement. Case managers work with specific individuals to understand their particular barriers and needs. The goal isn’t just to move people into housing — it’s to keep them there, which requires both ongoing structural and social support and sustained individual engagement.

The results: nine communities have achieved what’s called “functional zero” — not the elimination of homelessness, but a state where homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring because the system responds faster than people fall into crisis. Many other communities have made substantial reductions in chronic homelessness using the same approach.

Neither purely structural interventions (building shelters without follow-up) nor purely individual ones (clearing encampments without providing alternatives) have produced comparable outcomes anywhere, at least not that I’m aware of.

The Global Evidence: Cash Isn’t Enough

Moving more globally, if you want rigorous experimental evidence on this question, conditional cash transfer programs are great examples.

These programs, now operating in over sixty countries, give cash to low-income families on the condition that they meet certain behavioral requirements. Typically this involves keeping children in school and attending regular health checkups. They’re essentially a giant global experiment in whether combining structural support (cash) with individual expectations (conditions) outperforms structural support alone.

The results are remarkably consistent.

A randomized controlled trial in Italy compared three groups: families receiving unconditional cash transfers, families receiving the same cash amount conditional on attending mentoring and job-training courses, and a control group. The conditional group showed significant improvements in employment outcomes. The unconditional group showed no effect compared to the control.

The cash alone wasn’t enough. The cash plus engagement was.

A systematic review across Sub-Saharan Africa found the same pattern: conditional programs generally outperformed unconditional ones in achieving education and health targets. The conditions — which require individual action — add value beyond the cash itself.

Now, there’s nuance here. Unconditional transfers show benefits in some contexts, particularly for mental health and economic resilience in crisis situations. And conditions only work when the required services (schools, health clinics) actually exist and are accessible (more on this later). Structure still matters.

But the overall pattern supports the both/and thesis: structural support creates the conditions for individual agency to matter, while individual engagement makes structural investment worthwhile.

Why This Remains So Rare

If the evidence is this clear, why don’t more programs work this way?

Part of the answer is institutional. Government agencies are typically organized around either providing services (structural) or enforcing requirements (individual). Integrating both requires coordination across bureaucratic silos that have different missions, different cultures, and different metrics for success. It’s genuinely hard.

Part of the answer is political. Programs that combine support with expectations don’t fit neatly into either partisan frame. Progressives may resist the expectations component as blaming victims. Conservatives may resist the support component as enabling dependency. Both sides have incentives to claim that their preferred approach would work if only it were implemented more fully, rather than admitting that the other side has a point.

And part of the answer is psychological. Both/and thinking is harder than either/or thinking. It requires holding two causal frameworks in mind simultaneously, resisting the temptation to collapse complexity into simplicity. Our brains prefer clean stories with clear villains or at least clear causal directionality.

But the problems we face don’t care about our cognitive preferences or our political tribal loyalties. They exist in the real 4D world, where structures and individuals interact in complex, reciprocal, dynamic ways.

Personal Development and the Both/And Framework

A few readers shared examples of the individualism/structuralism binary in their personal lives. One reader shared the road rage example, which is a great one. You can be a wonderfully virtuous person in your daily life, but the structure of a lot of commutes can make that virtue hard to practice.

When I was coaching faculty back in the day I spent a lot of time helping them understand the connection between environmental structure and individual choice. Yes, you can white knuckle your way to tenure or through writing a book in a totally chaotic environment. I did it and while it sucks, it’s (sort of) doable. But it’s more enjoyable and you get better outcomes (both in terms of content and in terms of mental health) when you structure your environment in a way that allows your brain to work to its fullest potential. That’s not either structuralism or individual choice, but a complex and interactive combo of the two.

In my own life, I do a lot of intentional structuring so I don’t have to white knuckle my way through life. I get plenty of sleep and exercise, for starters. I also try to structure my time in very particular ways. I carve out deep work time and turn off notifications for social media so I’m more likely to be intentional about the time I spend there. I use focus music to cue my brain it’s time to work. I combine these structural elements with work to make better choices. I’ve worked hard to get less reactive online, to take the time to craft thoughtful replies instead of kneejerk defensive ones, and to generally build more virtuous skills in the online space. I’ve also worked to develop more discipline around writing and more discipline around maintaining the organizational systems that keep my life humming (still a work in progress, admittedly). I have to manually put the headphones on and turn email off.

After all, having deep work blocked off on my calendar is meaningless if I don’t actually start writing. You need ladders and the choice to climb.

Both at the time time.

Nuance Matters

One final caveat for all these examples: when designing these kinds of interventions, whether for yourself or other people, it’s important that the structural piece is aligned with what’s actually possible on the individual level. And you always need to be on the lookout for perverse incentives. Aid programs requiring workforce participation need to be flexible enough to recognize a range of participation and need to be aware of the way other kinds of regulations prevent workforce participation for people without particular kinds of trainings or credentialing. The jobs have to be accessible if you’re going to demand people find them. As mentioned above, conditional cash transfers only work if the conditions you’re requiring people meet are actually possible: there need to exist schools to attend, jobs to get, objectives to work hard for.

Similarly, on the individual level, you need to make sure that the way you structure your environment works for you at your particular stage of life (that pesky fourth dimension rears its ugly head again). Scheduling deep work blocks didn’t help me when I had completely unpredictable newborns around and my hormones were playing pinball with my braincells. Sometimes you just have to admit that the individual level effort and the background structures don’t match up and figure out something else: shift what success looks like, recognize it as a temporary pause moment, or an opportunity to rethink what an intervention can or should accomplish and how it’s built.

The Ladder and the Climb

I come back to the idea of people stuck in pits a lot because it’s a good metaphor for the kinds of problems we often hope to solve, both politically and in our own lives.

As I said last time, you can throw ladders into pits all day, but at some point the person has to climb. Providing tools and resources and structural support matters enormously; try climbing out of a pit without them. But the climbing is still necessary. The individual effort is still real.

And you can tell someone stuck in a pit to climb all you want. You can question their discipline, their motivation, and their choices. But without a ladder, without climbing shoes, without someone up top to help pull them out — your exhortations are just noise. Morally satisfying noise, maybe. But noise.

The programs and techniques that work socially, politically and personally provide the ladder and expect the climb. They don’t treat these as competing priorities. They treat them as complementary necessities.

This is harder than picking a side or taking a single rigid approach. It requires more nuance, more patience, and more willingness to admit that your political opponents have a point. It doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker or in a tweet.

But it’s closer to the truth. And unlike the binary, it actually solves problems.

Your Turn

As I develop this part of the book manuscript, I’d love to hear from you all. Where have you seen both/and thinking work in your own community or field? Where have you seen the binary prevent solutions that seem obvious once you step outside it? Are there examples I’m missing? Are there counterexamples I’m not addressing? Tell me in the comments! And of course, please share and subscribe if you haven’t already. In a world of broken algorithms, reader sharing is one of the only meaningful ways to spread ideas that we have left.