Among business leaders, actions typically speak louder than words. But, what really sets successful business leaders apart, author Roger Martin says, is their ability to think differently than the rest of us.
Rather than studying what leaders do and then trying to learn from their examples, Mr. Martin says, people need to understand and learn how to emulate how successful leaders think.
In his new book, The Opposable Mind, Mr. Martin uses real world examples to illustrate how exceptional leaders are able engage in something he calls integrative thinking - the ability to simultaneously hold opposing ideas and models in their heads while they work out new solutions to seemingly intractable problems.
In a series of excerpts published by The Globe and Mail, Mr. Martin has provided a glimpse into the ways successful leaders are continually evaluating the world around them, diagnosing and synthesizing problems, and solving them by recognizing the underlying relationships that tie everything together and the changes that need to be made.
At noon on Wednesday, Nov. 28, Mr. Martin will join us and take your questions on the lessons he's learned along the way and what you can do to learn how to strengthen your own integrative thinking. You can submit your question ahead of time by clicking here or using the comment feature for this story. Your questions and Mr. Martin's responses will appear below once the discussion begins.
Roger Martin is dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He holds the Premier's Chair in Competitiveness and Productivity and serves as a director of the AIC Institute for Corporate Citizenship at Rotman.
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Cathryn Motherwell, deputy editor, Report on Business: Welcome Roger to ReportonBusiness.com. We're delighted to have you online with us today. We have been collecting questions for you ever since we started running excerpts from your illuminating book. And so we will turn it directly over to our readers.
Name Withheld in Vancouver asks:
Mr. Martin, I really appreciate your work; I've lent my copy of 'The Responsibility Virus' to several colleagues (and more than one supervisor), as well as your work with Chris Argyris. I'm intrigued by the concept of 'The Opposable Mind'; I'm an engineer involved in new product development, and I've often been faced with opposable problems when developing a new design - making trade-offs between strength and weight of a component, for example. When multiple conflicting requirements cannot be reconciled, a decision is made to 'change the game' say, by choosing steel instead of aluminium. It sounds like a pretty basic decision-making process, but in my experience, the greater challenge is in defining the 'question' or the acceptance criteria, and attaining the knowledge required to properly evaluate multiple options and their consequences. To what degree would you attribute to the success of these leaders' to having opposable minds, compared to having the skills, experience and knowledge to realistically evaluate and act on the information in their particular situations? Also, I'm curious: in all of the cases presented in the paper, opposable thinking has led to success. Does your new book also include cases where opposable thinking techniques were used, and failed, or was not used at all? Often failure is the best teacher!
Roger Martin: Dear Vancouver: These are all interesting issues. Thanks for the kind words on The Responsibility Virus. As my first book, it always has a warm place in my heart.
The success of integrative thinkers is definitely partially a result of experience. In the back half of the book I explore the question of how Integrative Thinkers develop their capacity and Experiences is one of the three key components, along with what I call Stance and Tools. And yes, failure is unquestionably the best teacher, though only if the reaction is reflection on not distancing from failure.
I also want to affirm your point on problem setting rather than problem solving. In many respects, the Integrative Thinkers that I studied set that problem as finding a better solution than embodied in the currently known options rather than setting the problem as choosing from among the current options. This is a fundamental aspect of the Integrative Thinking Stance - to believe that there is a better answer out there somewhere waiting to be discovered.
Cheers
Roger
Vivaldo Latoche in Ottawa writes:
Dear Mr. Martin,
I think that your book is coming out at the right time, especially when we know how bad the industrial sector of Canada, in general, and in particular, Ontario is performing.
For instance, consider the following statistics: 'Ontario's manufacturing sector has already lost 140,000 jobs in the past four years, including 100,000 in Greater Toronto Area alone.' Reported by a Toronto newspaper on July 26, 2007.
What will your advice be to the business leaders of the manufacturing sector, who are still in operation in Canada? Or shall we accept our fate as an Ottawa newspaper stated in its editorial of November 10, 2007. 'Without Ontario manufacturers, Canada is a country of hewers of wood and drawers of water, that is, a resource economy.'
Thank you for your time and attention.
Vivaldo Latoche
Roger Martin:
Dear Vivaldo:
The question of the fate of the industrial heartland of Canada is really important.
However, one thing I would want to avoid is over-focus on manufacturing jobs. While manufacturing is important and a goodly proportion of manufacturing jobs are high-paying, it is an undeniable fact that all developed economies are shifting from manufacturing to service jobs. Not most; all. And many of the service jobs are high paying jobs. So while with read about the 100K lost manufacturing jobs, the total number of jobs has increased and GDP/capita has increased, so the shift toward services has not somehow devastated the economy.
One undercurrent is really important to understand. As companies disaggregate to increase effectiveness they make manufacturing jobs "disappear" in a deceptive way. So imagine a big Ontario manufacturer deciding to do a deal with EDS to outsource all of its Information Technology needs. Let's say for sake of argument, that involves 1,000 of the manufacturer's employees. Typically EDS will hire most of the current employees and build them into their organization. So even though the 1,000 employees are doing the same thing - though typically more effectively and efficiently - the shift results in the "loss of 1,000 manufacturing jobs" because EDS is considered a service company. Is this a "loss" we should cry ourselves to sleep over? No, it is a productive shifting of employment to a more productive business model - hopefully the manufacturer, EDS and the Province are all better off.
The other thing to note is that Canada is not a resource economy. A mere 8.5% of all Canadian jobs are in the resource sector even if the broadest possible definition is used. Our economic composition is much more like that of the US than different. We just tend to ship our resources across borders and the US consumes their own.
That all having been said, we need our Canadian managers to use their Opposable Minds to come up with unique products and processes that create more customer value rather than simply replicate the choices of others. That is the key to our future prosperity.
Cheers.
Roger
Viktor O. Ledenyov of Kharkov, Ukraine writes: Could you please make a few thoughtful comments on the strategic management and business model issues, namely how can the innovative integrative adaptive thinking help the board of directors to recognize properly the barriers to entry, strategic boundaries and limits to growth of the corporation in the time of high volatility in capital markets?
Roger Martin: Dear Viktor:
Greetings Viktor; you hail from the birthplace of my late maternal grandmother!
I think Boards of Directors operate in a very challenging context. The various US scandals and the dreadful Sarbanes-Oxley reaction have given boards an excuse to pay attention exclusively to bureaucratic governance issues rather than to the strategic oversight of their companies. Certainly they must focus some of their time on adherence to regulatory standards, but I think that must be balanced with the most important governance challenge and that is to ensure that their firm has a great strategy. Boards shouldn't and arguably can't create strategy - that is the job of the CEO and his/her management team.
However, boards can set more or less productive contexts for their executive team setting great strategy. A less productive context is one in which the board accepts unpleasant trade-offs rather than challenging the executive team to think integratively to come up with creative resolutions. A less productive context is one in which the board rushes its executive team to conclusions rather than giving it time and encouragement to come up with better ideas.
In essence, if boards adopt the stance I outline in Chapter Six of the book, they will have the effect of encouraging their managers to adopt that productive Stance as well - and they will like the strategies that come forward better that way!
Cheers.
Roger
Viktor O. Ledenyov from Kharkov, Ukraine asks a second question: Do you agree with the statement that the global challenges need global solutions, which could only be proposed by a new generation of leaders with the creative conceptual intelligent integrative thinking, who would be able to capitalize on the available business opportunities, innovate the Canadian society, and lead the nation forward in our increasingly changing global World?
Roger Martin: Dear Viktor:
I would modify that somewhat. I think that global challenges need solutions that embody a global perspective. And those solutions will be better if made by leaders with the Stance, Tools and Experiences of Integrative Thinkers. While I think a subset of problems do need a principally global-based solution - greenhouse gases and arms control for example - many issues will be better tackled by national or sub-national governance bodies but those bodies will do better by keeping the global context in mind. For example, Mayor Miller needs to keep the unfolding of competition in the global financial services sector in mind when he thinks about policies that will impact on the financial services cluster in downtown Toronto.
Cheers
Roger
NA E from Canada writes: You discuss and describe thinking processes used by successful business leaders but isn't your 'integrative thinking' a developed cognitive activity that would be successful for just about anyone to use?
Roger Martin: Dear NA E:
I actually describe a process used by leaders generally, though the majority of my examples are from the field I know best - business. That having been said, I go into great detail in analyzing the thinking of dance pioneer Martha Graham, film festival boss Piers Handling, university founder Taddy Blecher and non-profit health organization founder Victoria Hale. So I would agree with you. I think of Integrative Thinking as a broadly useful capacity even though I started out my quest to understand it by looking first at successful business leaders.
Cheers. R
Harpaul Sambhi from Toronto writes: Hi Roger, I love reading the excerpts on the Globe and will pick up your book in my next visit to the bookstore. I am currently a student and have just started a business while studying full-time at the University of Waterloo. In terms of integrative thinking, what advice would you have for those who are in university or recently graduated that you gained while studying corporate leaders, including your success?
Roger Martin: Dear Harpaul:
You are at a great university. It is the university nearest to my birthplace and my older brother's and baby sister's alma mater. And I am a huge fan and friend of your terrific President. So I am sure you will get a great education!
My advice is to read Chapter Six very carefully and thoroughly when you do pick up the book. It addresses the Stance of the Integrative Thinking - specifically how they see the world around them and their role in it. An advantage for you, Harpaul, is that you are still very young (even though it may not seem it to you!) and if you adopt the Stance of an Integrative Thinker now it will put you on a very different path of development than most around you. You will be inclined to see the possibilities in your world more so than the constraints. It will cause you to be patient with yourself as you make decisions. And it will cause you to acquire more productive Tools (Chapter Seven) and accumulate more helpful Experiences (Chapter Eight).
I hope that helps.
Cheers.
Roger
Lena Wang from Canada writes: Hi Mr. Martin, I would like to ask you if this 'integrative mind' is something that just one day clicks on or is it something that develops over time. How would you know if you have an integrative mind?
Roger Martin: Dear Lena:
It is most definitely something that develops over time. Experiences are critical to successful Integrative Thinking. In order for the Integrative Thinker to succeed, he or she needs to know what features of the problem in question are salient, what the causal relationships are between the salient features and how to create an appropriate decision architecture. All of those things require experience operating in the territory in question. So Integrative Thinkers tend to get better and better with time.
How would you know? You will know if you can sense yourself rejecting unpleasant trade-offs and driving successfully for creative resolutions. If instead you sense yourself accepting unpleasant trade-offs and feeling trapped by a miserable world, you probably haven't exercised your Integrative Thinking neurons enough yet!
Cheers.
Roger
Mel Gill from Ottawa asks: Opposable Mind. Great title. Can't wait to grasp it. But what does it add to Senge's Fifth Discipline and Collins and Porras's (Built to Last) 'level 5 leadership'?
Roger Martin: Dear Mel:
Glad you like the title. Let me take the two in reverse order.
I reference Collins and Built to Last directly in the first chapter of the book (pp. 16-19). I guess I would say that the Opposable Mind is different than Built to Last in that it delves into how the highly successful folks that we both study THINK rather than DO, on which Collins focuses more. Both are useful perspectives. I attempt to point out in the book the limitations of looking only at actions and not the thinking behind.
In terms of what I attempt to add to Collins, that is ability to translate theory into action. Collins is quite specific on this front and I quote him on page 18: "For your own development I would love to be able to give you a list of steps for becoming Level 5, but we have no solid research data that would support a credible list." The back half of my book solely addresses the question of how can you become an Integrative Thinker and I hope that is a valuable addition to where Collins leaves off.
Peter Senge is a good friend and a great thinker. He was also strongly influenced by two people/fields that influenced me and they influenced both of our books: 1) Jay Forrester/John Sterman and systems dynamics; and 2) Chris Argyris and organizational learning. In my book, Forrester/Sterman/system dynamics influence the Causal Modeling Tool and Argyris/organizational learning influence the Assertive Inquiry Tool. The add that I think my book attempts to make on Peter's wonderful contribution is with Generative Reasoning; the creative element of imagining and constructing models that do not now exist.
Hope that helps place the book in context.
Cheers.
Roger
Helen Yee from Toronto asks: I am not a people manager, but feel that leadership is a quality that I want to strengthen in my role as an independent consultant.
I participate primarily in projects where the needs of my area need representation. As such, I focus on those requirements, and not on the needs of other areas.
How would you suggest I incorporate integrative thinking to enhance both what I want, and what is required for the project as a whole?
Thanks, Helen Yee
Roger Martin: Dear Helen:
This is a very important question and capacity.
As an Integrative Thinker you would suspend belief in your model - or the point of view of your area that you feel the need to represent - and take the time to inquire into and fully understand the other person's (or persons' if it is multiple other areas) model, seeking to fully understand and appreciate it before thinking another thought. Try as hard as you can to try to imagine why their model may be absolutely right rather than absolutely wrong.
When you have gotten to that point - really understanding and appreciating the logic of the two models - instead of using that insight to demolish to other model, direct it instead to the task of constructing a better model still; one that incorporates aspects of each but is superior to both.
Then you can call yourself an Integrative Thinker. Others will call you things like: great to work with; highly creative; can do; collaborative; etc.
Cheers.
Roger
Cathryn Motherwell: A reader has suggested that bad leaders will lead to bad decisions. He cites politicians, who have made what we now consider historically unpopular or unpalatable decisions. It seems to me that some of these leaders were successful, and quite possibly were good integrative thinkers, even though in hindsight they are viewed as making bad decisions. Your thoughts?
Roger Martin: This is somewhat of a difficult question to be addressed in the abstract without reference to specific examples, but I will attempt to answer it the best I can.
I do not discount that a leader could use Integrative Thinking for evil purposes even though that is obviously not the intent of having written the book! In some sense, any thinking tool that I can imagine can be used for good, bad or indifferent intents. Terrorists use game theory to plot their attacks, for example. So I don't doubt that some past leaders who accomplished bad things were intelligent and used sophisticated thinking patterns to achieve their goals.
What I would hope is that someone who is truly an Integrative Thinker in the full spirit of the concept, would find it hard to pursue genuinely evil intents because he/she would find it difficult as an Integrative Thinker, not to take the thoughts and interests of the target of his/her evil into account and figure out a better way to get his/her goals accomplished without resorting to evil approaches.
That having been said, I am not a student of evil. Probably my youngest brother Terry, a Russion History professor who studied Stalin's era intensively could probably answer the question better because he really had to understand Stalin for his work.
I will email him and if I get an answer, I will include it!
Cheers.
Roger
Heather Brown from Toronto writes: Hello Mr. Martin. I am just learning about your book now. I, too, am a student. I attend George Brown College. I learned at an early age that I think differently than other people and Integrative Thinking is a great way to define this difference. However, as I naturally slip into leadership roles at school and use my integrative thinking skills, I am having difficulty communicating with the rest of my colleagues because they do not think like I do. What advise do you have to help me with relating to others and relaying my ideas and thoughts to them?
Roger Martin: Heather:
And the terrific and successful President of your College is a Rotman MBA!
Not a surprising problem. Many of the Integrative Thinkers I interviewed expressed the same frustration. They found it hard to explain to those around them why they thought what they thought and how they thought up the things they did.
Part of the answer lies in making your own thinking more explicit to yourself. Rather than just thinking; think about how you are thinking in real time. Ask yourself why you believe x; don't by satisfied with that you think x.
In addition, spend more time inquiring into the models of others. It is nice when the other person can build a bridge from how they think to how you think. But often they won't be able to do so. Instead you have to do that work and that work starts by truly understanding their model. With that understanding, you can lead them by the hand from their model to your model. That doesn't mean they will accept and embrace your model, just that they will at least understand it well enough to evaluate it.
Hope that helps.
Cheers.
Roger
Fool Monty from Vancouver writes:
I like the excerpts of The Opposable Mind that I have read thusfar in the G&M. I would like to thank Roger Martin for providing valuable insight into the thinking of successful business leaders.
I would be interested to know if there has been any research into this same mindset at other levels of organizations. Does the cream inevitably or inexorably rise to the top? Or, does the relative value to this type of thinking vary depending upon where in the organization an individual resides?
Thanks and very best regards.
Roger Martin: Dear Fool Monty:
Thanks for the kind words.
It is a good question for which I don't have a definitive answer. In order to illustrate the phenomenon in a way that would be more salient and compelling I picked leaders who would be recognizable and attachable to the public accomplishments of their organizations. The downside is that it left unanswered your question.
However, I can give you anecdotal evidence on your question. I have worked with many CEOs in my life and continue to work with two intensively. I listen to them describe high potential employees down deep into their organization. Without fail the folks on which they are the highest and want to promote most quickly are the ones they describe in a fashion that makes me certain they are Integrative Thinkers. Even at a relatively junior level they stand out in combining the production of great solutions in their substantive domains and great relationships with their colleagues in the interpersonal domain. For that reason, I suspect that Integrative Thinkers rise more quickly to the top by using their Integrative Thinking skills long before they get to the top.
Cheers.
Roger
Cathryn Motherwell: Thank you ever so much for your time today in exploring this fascinating exploration of how leaders think and evaluate their decision making. We'd like to give you the last word on how we can all become more integrative thinkers.
Roger Martin: Thanks for the opportunity. What wonderful questions.
To me as I have thought more and more about this, it all starts with Stance. I sometimes think that I might have started the book with what is the back half first because it starts with the Stance of Integrative Thinkers not the process by which they think.
But the six elements of Stance are critical because they lead to behaviours that reinforce every element of Integrative Thinking. They are:
1) To distinguish existing models from reality; they are just your constructions
2) To see opposing models as gifts to be leveraged not problems to be eliminated
3) To see that better models exist that are not yet seen
4) To believe that you can find such better models
5) To let yourself wade confidently into the necessary complexity
6) And to give yourself the time to find the creative resolution, not jump to choosing one of the models
That would be the best way to start.
Thanks again.
Roger