The Opposable Mind
How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking
About the book
Roger L. Martin argues that people who want to emulate great leaders should study how they think rather than copy what they did. His name for that thinking is integrative thinking: facing two opposing models and, instead of choosing one, forming a new model that keeps elements of both and improves on each. Integrative thinkers, he says, take a broad view of what is relevant, consider non-linear causes, and keep the whole problem in mind. Examples come from A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Isadore Sharp of Four Seasons and Bob Young of Red Hat, among others. The second half explains how to build the skill through stance, tools and experience. Harvard Business Review Press published it in 2007.
Serial entrepreneur Boban Dedovic said it had the biggest impact on how he approaches decision making, especially its idea that top leaders find a better third option instead of picking between two.
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Boban Dedovic (Serial Entrepreneur)
The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin had the biggest impact on my thinking and viewpoint towards decision making.
Among many other themes, the book stressed the idea that successful leaders (the top 10%) had one distinguishing characteristic: they took traditional two-option decisions (both with pros and cons) and found a winning alternative, we’ll call it C. The winning alternative (C) comes from creative thought and generally minimizes the cons while maximizing the pros of any option. This kind of thinking had a profound impact on my decision making outcomes.
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