The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking

I completely agree with Robert Morris' review of this excellent book. Psychology professors Howard Gardner of Harvard and Robert Sternberg of Yale have described how individuals have different cognitive abilities and thinking styles. In The Opposable Mind, Roger Martin, Dean of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, makes the case that an integrative thinking style is necessary for organizations and leaders to thrive given today's complex world. He provides fascinating examples of integrative thinkers and organizations. Martin deconstructs integrative thinking and by doing so helps us understand how to think in an integrative way. This book is filled with interesting concepts and examples. I especially enjoyed learning about the examples of Isadore Sharp of The Four Seasons Hotel Company, Ideo, a scene from the movie Crash, A.G. Lafley of P & G, and Charles Sanders Peirce's fallibilist stance. This book will benefit any leader or anyone who aspires to be a leader. It is a must read for anyone interested in knowledge management and systems thinking.

Have you read "Good to Great" and wanted to dig deeper on level-5 leadership? Have you read Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan and had an uneasy feeling that the solutions in their books were a tad simplistic? Then you must read Roger Martin's "The Opposable Mind". The author does a great job of getting to the core of what makes successful leaders. It was an "Aha" moment when the author reveals how copying great leaders' decisions may not be the right thing for your situation and how some great leaders such as Jack Welch might not be able to reveal the thinking behind their decisions. I would highly recommend this book if you are looking to gain a deeper understanding of business leadership. However, some amount of comfort with academic language and abstraction is necessary to get through this book.

As I began to read this brilliant book, I was reminded of what Doris Kearns reveals about Abraham Lincoln in Team of Rivals. Specifically, that following his election as President in 1860, Lincoln assembled a cabinet whose members included several of his strongest political opponents: Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War (who had called Lincoln a "long armed Ape"), William H. Seward as Secretary of State (who was preparing his acceptance speech when Lincoln was nominated), Salmon P. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury (who considered Lincoln in all respects his inferior), and Edward Bates as Attorney General who viewed Lincoln as a well-meaning but incompetent administrator but later described him as "very near being a perfect man." Presumably Roger Martin agrees with me that Lincoln possessed what Martin views as "the predisposition and the capacity to hold two [or more] diametrically opposed ideas" in his head and then "without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other," was able to "produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea." Throughout his presidency, Lincoln frequently demonstrated integrative thinking, a "discipline of consideration and synthesis [that] is the hallmark of exceptional businesses [as well as of democratic governments] and those who lead them." The great leaders whom Martin discusses (e.g. Martha Graham, George F. Kennan, Isadore Sharp, A.G. Lafley, Lee-Chin, and Bob Young) developed a capacity to consider what Thomas C. Chamberlain characterizes as "multiple working hypotheses" when required to make especially complicated decisions. Like Lincoln, they did not merely tolerate contradictory points of view, they encouraged them. Only in this way could they and their associates "face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension [whatever its causes may be] in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each." This process of consideration is based on a quite different model than the more commonly employed scientific method based on, as Martin explains, the working hypothesis that is used "to test the validity of a single explanatory concept through trial and error and experimentation." He rigorously examines the process of integrative thinking in terms of four constituent parts: salience, causality, architecture, and resolution. He devotes a separate chapter to each, citing dozens of real-world examples, and then (in Chapter 5), he introduces a framework within which his reader can also develop integrative thinking capacity. For me, some of the most interesting and most valuable material is provided in Chapter 7 as Martin explains how integrative thinkers "connect the dots." He cites Taddy Blecher (co-founder of CIDA City Campus, an innovative South African university) as one example. I think the details are best revealed within their context

Based on extensive interviews, the author focuses on the thinking skills rather than the doing skills of leaders. Integrative thinking is the topic. This types of thinking enables an exploration of opposing ideas in order to reach innovative solutions. Integrative thinking involves four steps: salience (allowing more features to be considered, introducing complexity), causality (multidimensional and nonlinear), architecture (seeing the whole while working on the parts), and resolution (creative resolution of tensions). Each of these is explored in separate chapters, along with the obstacles of simplification and specialization, forces working against integrative thinking. A framework for building integrative thinking capacity is presented involving stance, tools and experiences, and the author discusses how each can and is being taught. This is an excellent journey into effective thinking, whether by a leader or anyone engaged in enterprise. Very highly recommended.

"Why didn't I think of that?" is a common reaction to other people's creative breakthroughs. In hindsight, the idea looks so simple, so elegant, so right, that you can't believe you missed it. But for some reason you did. Why? Can this sort of creativity be taught? Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, answers both questions in this beautiful systematization of creative problem solving. The good news is, it can be taught and Martin is a wonderful teacher. We think his ideas are so clear and logical, so obviously right, that you'll wonder why you didn't think of them.