The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking

by Roger L. Martin

Overview

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, you'll 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781422118924
Publisher:	Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date:	10/29/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Roger Martin is an author, business school professor, and strategy adviser to CEOs. He is Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, where he served as Dean from 1998 to 2013. He is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and other leading publications and has published nine books, including Playing to Win, The Opposable Mind, and Creating Great Choices.

What People are Saying About This

Malcolm Gladwell

"In The Opposable Mind, Roger Martin goes beyond the question of what great leaders think to the more important and more interesting question of how they think. Brilliant and utterly convincing."--(Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point)

Editorial Reviews

"Martin makes a compelling argument for a paradoxical approach to problem-solving." —BusinessWeek,

"...compelling...the thesis that fresh thought processes are required to deal with the world s contradictions and complexities rings true." — The Financial Times

From the Publisher

...compelling . . . the thesis that fresh thought processes are required to deal with the world's contradictions and complexities rings true.

The Financial Times