The Opposable Mind: Winning
Through Integrative Thinking by
Roger L. Martin
Beyond Binary Choices - Learning From The Best Leaders
If you want to be as successful as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, or Michael
Dell, read their autobiographical advice books, right? Wrong, says Roger
Martin in The Opposable Mind. Though following best practice can help in
some ways, it also poses a danger: by emulating what a great leader did in
a particular situation, youll likely 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.
Personal Review: The Opposable Mind: Winning Through
Integrative Thinking by Roger L. Martin
Some of my best experiences in reading books have occurred when
someone I trust and respect has said to me: "You need to read this book!"
That is how I discovered the marvelous insights that Roger Martin shares
in his book, "The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through
Integrative Thinking." One day over lunch, my friend, Rick Cerf, showed
me the book and told me that I needed to add it to my reading list. Thanks,
Rick!
Martin, who is Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the
University of Toronto, offers as his major premise the idea that the best
leaders avoid simplistic binary choices, and put in the extra effort to find
solutions to complex problems - solutions that go beyond false
dichotomies. The best leaders think in terms of "Both/And" rather than
"Either/Or."
"As I listened to some of the sharpest minds in business talk about how
they thought through the most pressing and perplexing dilemmas of their
careers, I searched for a metaphor that could give me deeper insight into
the dynamic of their thinking. The skill with which these thinkers held two
opposing ideas in fruitful tension reminded me of the way other highly
skilled people use their hands. Human beings, it's well known, are
distinguished from nearly every other creature by a physical feature known
as the opposable thumb. Thanks to the tension we create by opposing the
thumb and fingers, we can do marvelous things that no other creature can
do - write, thread a needle, carve a diamond, paint a picture, guide a
catheter up through an artery to unblock it. All those actions would be
impossible without the crucial tension between the thumb and the fingers. .
. Similarly, we were born with an opposable mind we can use to hold two
conflicting ideas in constructive tension." (Pages 6-7)
The language that Martin chooses here is very instructive, and is
reminiscent of language I remember being used by one of my favorite
graduate school professors - Dr. Gordon Fee. Dr. Fee, one of the
translators of the New International Version of the Bible, is a brilliant
biblical scholar and communicator. He would often describe difficult
portions of Scripture that, on the surface, may appear to contradict each
other, and he would declaim: "We hold these truths in tension!"
As an example of "opposable mind thinking," Martin offers the legendary
choreographer, Martha Graham:

"Like Graham, the creative thinkers I interviewed knew they would need
plenty of help to reach creative resolutions. They chose their collaboration
expressly for what they would contribute to an integrated whole. Bruce
Mau, a renowned designer and frequent collaborator with architect Frank
Gehry, told me, 'You can't make a renaissance person any more, because
the range of what you would need to do is just impossible. But you could
actually assemble a renaissance team.' The integrative thinkers rely on
their 'renaissance teams' to broaden salience, maintain sophisticated
causality, and create a holistic architecture in their drive for creative
resolution." (Page 82)
Throughout the book, Martin lays out principle for integrative thinking and
fleshes out those principles using real world examples:
"Nandan Nilekani, the builder and CEO of what is perhaps India's most
successful global IT powerhouse, Infosys Technologies Limited, says that
when he's confronted with two fundamentally opposed sets of
requirements, his first inclination is to ask, 'Are there solutions that satisfy
both?' And when asked whether he thought strategy or execution was
more important, Jack Welch, the former chairman and CEO of General
Electric, responded, 'I don't think it's an either-or.'" (Page 114)
Since Rick turned me on to this book and its treasure chest of ideas, I have
had occasion to share those ideas with quite a few individuals. In several
cases, they called me back a day or two later to thank me for the insights,
and to tell me that they had ordered their own copy of the book. In the
interest of "paying forward" the gift that Rick Cerf gave me of a marvelous
suggestion that I read this book, I recommend that you procure a copy of
"The Opposable Mind."
Enjoy!
Al
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