The Opposable Mind by Roger L

The Opposable Mind By Roger L. Martin Reviewed by Robert Schmidt

About the Author Roger Martin has served since 1998 as Dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, where he holds the Premier’s Research Chair in Competitiveness and Productivity. Martin holds an AB from Harvard University (1979) and an MBA from Harvard Business School (1981). He was a member of the group of HBS classmates who grew Monitor Company from a tiny start-up to one of the world’s leading strategy consulting firms and served as co-head of the firm in 1995 and 1996. He continues to serve as an adviser to CEOs of large global companies.

About the Book Martin, Roger L.. The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (Kindle Locations 2582-2588). Harvard If you want to be as successful as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, or Michael Dell, read their Business Review Press. Kindle Edition. Other books by Martin include: autobiographical advice books, right? Wrong, says Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind. Though following best practice canPlaying help toin Winsome, Creating ways, it alsoGreat poses Choices a danger:, The Design By emulating od Business what aand great leader did in a particularGetting situation, Beyond you'll Betterlikely be. terribly disappointed with your own results. Why? Your situation is different.

Instead of focusing on what exceptional leaders do, we need to understand and emulate how they think. Successful businesspeople engage in what Martin calls integrative thinking creatively resolving the tension in opposing models by forming entirely new and superior ones. Drawing on stories of leaders as diverse as AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health, and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Martin shows how integrative thinkers are relentlessly diagnosing and synthesizing by asking probing questions including: What are the causal relationships at work here? and What are the implied trade-offs?

Martin also presents a model for strengthening your integrative thinking skills by drawing on different kinds of knowledge including conceptual and experiential knowledge.

Integrative thinking can be learned, and The Opposable Mind helps you master this vital skill.

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Choices, Conflict and the Creative Spark

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.” -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack Up

It is said that the Chinese character for crisis combines the character for “danger” and “opportunity”.

“The leaders I have studied share at least one trait, aside from their talent for innovation and long-term business success. They have the predisposition and the capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they’re able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea. Integrative thinking is my term for this process—or more precisely this discipline of consideration and synthesis—that is the hallmark of exceptional businesses and the people who run them.”

No Stomach for Second Best

“We weren’t going to win if it was an “or.” Everybody can do “or.” That’s the way the world works. You trade things off but you’re not going to be the best in your industry. You are not going to win if you are in a trade-off game.” -- A. G. Lafley, CEO Proctor & Gamble

Imagine you’re planning your next summer holiday. After much thought and discussion with your spouse, you’ve whittled a nearly infinite number of choices down to three serious alternatives: touring Tuscany by bicycle, exploring the ancient Buddhist temples of Cambodia, or whale watching in Hawaii. As you and your spouse try to choose among three alternatives that seem equally compelling, you ask each other a series of questions:

• How much will each trip cost? • What kinds of accommodations are available? • Can we find knowledgeable guides? • Which destination is the most exotic and likely to offer the most unusual experiences? • Will we learn something new on the trip? • How much time will we spend in transit, compared to the time we’ll spend at our destination?

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Reality, Resistance and Resolution

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” -- Albert Einstein

Dancing Through Complexity

“Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” -- Albert Einstein

One of the most sophisticated and successful renaissance teams in business today is the industrial design firm IDEO. What gives IDEO its edge is that CEO Tim Brown and his colleagues recognize that the people who use products and services don’t judge them simply by their functional performance. They also judge them by the degree of emotional satisfaction they provide. How a kitchen utensil makes its user feel is as important as how it chops or cuts. Many of IDEO’s competitors have belatedly come to the same realization, but IDEO got there first, and it has much more experience than its rivals in designing for the emotions, for the heart as well as the hand.

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Mapping the Mind

By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. -- Confucius

At the top of your personal knowledge food chain is your stance. It is your most broad-based knowledge domain in which you define who you are in your world and what you are trying to accomplish in it. Stance is how you see the world around you, but it’s also how you see yourself in that world.

The Construction Project

“It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.” —Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135)

Integrative thinkers are a varied lot, as we’ve seen. But their stances have in common six key features. Three concern the world around them; three concern their role in it.

• First, they believe that whatever models exist at the present moment do not represent reality; they are simply the best, or only, constructions yet made. • Second, they believe that conflicting models, styles, and approaches to problems are to be leveraged, not feared. • Third, they believe that better models exist that are not yet seen. • Fourth, they believe that not only does a better model exist, but that they are capable of bringing that better model from abstract hypothesis to concrete reality.

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• Fifth, they are comfortable wading into complexity to ferret out a new and better model, confident they will emerge on the other side with the resolution they seek. • And sixth, they give themselves the time to create a better model.

A Leap of the Mind

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” —Archimedes

The first of the three tools of integrative thinkers is generative reasoning, a form of reasoning that inquires into what might be rather than what is.

The second tool of integrative thinkers is causal modeling. Sophisticated causal modeling is a crucial underpinning for causality and architecture, the middle two steps of the integrative thinking process.

The third important tool for the integrative thinker is assertive inquiry. Integrative thinkers use it to explore opposing models, and in particular, models that oppose their own.

A Wealth of Experience

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” —Pablo Picasso

Spontaneity, experimentation, flexibility, and openness aren’t terribly rare qualities in and of themselves. But it’s the mark of an integrative thinker to nurture those markers of originality while at the same time deepening mastery, whose markers—organization, planning, focus, and repetition—are originality’s seeming opposite. Mastery and originality need each other to grow.

Mastery isn’t gained by accident. It comes only through planned and structured repetition of a consistent type of experience. That is why I argue that experiences don’t necessarily deepen mastery.

Originality demands a willingness to experiment, spontaneity in response to a novel situation, and openness to trying something different than perhaps first planned or intended.

Work hard, think hard, and don’t dawdle. The world needs you!

Roger Martin YouTube (4:56 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG6g4Pj4LQE

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