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The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking
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Sales rank 199,333
Customers rating (based on 22 reviews)
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Successful business leaders think fundamentally differently than others - in a more "integrative" and expansive way. Emulating what successful leaders do is dangerous; instead, learn how these leaders think. This "integrative thinking" can be taught; we can all learn how to do it, and experience the many benefits.
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| Publisher | Harvard Business School Press | | Release date | 12/2007 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $26.95 | | Our price | $17.79 (you save 33.99%) | | Used price | from $5.68 |
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A Saliently Satisfying Book for Budding Geniuses, Regardless of Age!
A saliently Druckerian, Picassoesque, winning-through-integrative-thinking physics-like business book...Phew...Brainstormingly learning to bounce around diverse & seemingly opposing notions together into quite refreshing solutions! Not a super-easy read, yet quite fun and well worth it! An ideal book for budding geniuses, regardless of age:}
 excellent rextbook for critical thinking
I teach an undergrauate course about critical thinking in organizations. This semester, I assigned Professor Martin's book. It was a positive experience, so I recommend that other educators consider using it as well.
Roger Martin grounds his book in extensive interviews with acknowledged leaders, primarily in the business sector. Yet he brings a discerning mind to the material, detecting a broad pattern to the way many successful leaders think. From this template, he derives many lessons for prospective leaders who wish to advance.
I teach adult students. They could understand his examples quickly. And with some in-class exercises, they got a chance to practice his lessons. In my opinion, the author brings credibility to a realm of management studies that often gets overlooked. The book is relatively inexpensive, accessible, and handy -- traits students really appreciate.
 loosely connected ideas with poor examples
It would have been a 3-star book if it were published 10-15 years ago... There is not a single interesting or new idea in this book. And the model that is presented in the book loosely connects some elements of creative thinking and action and tries to demonstrate it with poor examples. If you are a new graduate starting your career, you may find a few things, perhaps, that are useful, but otherwise it's not worth spending your time.
Interesting Read
In seeking lessons to apply, we often try to emulate what effective leaders do, drawing on the accounts of actions as recounted in popular management books. Roger Martin, author of The Opposable Mind, suggests our focus on a leaders actions is misplaced because moves that work in one situation may be defeating in another. Martin proposes we place our attention on how leaders think.
Based on interviews with over 50 top executives, Martin came to the conclusion that they all share one unique thought process -- the predisposition and the capacity to hold two diametrically opposed 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. Martin calls this integrative thinking (the discipline of consideration and synthesis).
Frequently we are asked to do two or more diametrically opposed things such as delivering more innovation with less money. Often we are tempted to pick one side of the argument (the side, we most easily identify with as - right) and close our eyes to the other. After reading this book, I've been able to catch myself and others making the same mistake and I've started to realize how easy it is for us to have a tendency towards either-or thinking. Our minds tend to naturally dismiss the complexity and messiness required to hold conflicting ideas in our head.
Martin described four stages in an interesting process that integrative thinkers (and firms) use to decide on and craft superior solutions. These are
1. Discover the salient features of a problem.
2. Develop causality of the factors
3. Envision the decision architecture
4. Achieve resolution
I found Martin's introduction to this illuminating subject fascinating.
Did I overlook something?
I have no problem to apprehend the wisdom of Fitzgerald that "The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same timeand 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.". However, I really cant appreciate the author's elaboration and modification of the above into his "Integrative Thinking and Opposable Mind" terminology and modelling, which to me are common practice of scholars to add to their collection of research papers with little value at all. Sorry to say that even de Bono's books can help more. In short, not recommended.
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