The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking

by Roger L. Martin

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.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership, Psychology, Management, Self Help, Personal Development

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Roger Martin is the Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship at the Rotman School of Management and the Premier’s Chair in Productivity & Competitiveness. From 1998 to 2013, he served as Dean. Previously, he spent 13 years as a Director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served as co-head of the firm for two years.

His research work is in Integrative Thinking, Business Design, Strategy, Corporate Social Responsibility and Country Competitiveness. He writes extensively and is a regular contributor to: Harvard Business Review’s The Conversation blog, the Financial Times’ Judgment Call column, and the Guardian Sustainable Business. He has written 24 Harvard Business Review articles and published 10 books: Getting Beyond Better (with Sally Osberg); Harvard Business Review Press (HBRP, 2015); Playing to Win (with A.G. Lafley) (HBRP, 2013); Fixing the Game (HBRP, 2011); The Design of Business (HBRP, 2009); The Opposable Mind (HBRP, 2007); The Responsibility Virus (Basic Books, 2002); Canada: What It Is, What It Can Be (with Jim Milway, Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2012); and Diaminds (with Mihnea Moldoveanu, University of Toronto Press, 2009), and The Future of the MBA (with Mihnea Moldoveanu, Oxford University Press, 2008). In addition, he co-edited Rotman on Design (with Karen Christensen, Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2013).

In 2013, Roger placed 3rd on the Thinkers50 list, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers, moving up from 6th in 2011 and 32nd in 2009. In 2010, he was named one of the 27 most influential designers in the world by Business Week. In 2007 he was named a Business Week 'B-School All-Star' for being one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world. Business Week also named him one of seven 'Innovation Gurus' in 2005.

He serves on a number of public service boards: Skoll Foundation, Canadian Credit Management Foundation, Tennis Canada (past chair), and Bridgespan Group (academic advisory board chair).

A Canadian from Wallenstein, Ontario, Roger received his AB from Harvard College, with a concentration in Economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981.

Reviews

[Doug Wells · Rating 1 out of 5]

Blah blah blah blah,blah ......interesting paragraph .......blah, blah blah blah

[Simon Eskildsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Opposable Mind is a book about thinking. The book centers around the topic of how to come up with original, creative ideas. This topic definitely deserves a book. It creates a mental model for something I've struggled to put into words for the past year.

Integrative thinking is the theme of the book. This a unique kind of thinking. When you approach a problem, you often find yourself at the end of a spectrum. You engage your opposable mind to locate the other end. You list out the pros and cons of each side, and you pick one—right? With integrative thinking, instead of picking, you combine. You bend and twist both sides until you end up with something in the golden middle that captures the pros of both sides.

In order to do this, you need to line up all the elements that are salient to a decision. Then you need to consider all the complex relationships between them. If you change one, what happens to the others? Is the relationship bi-directional? Is the relationship non-linear? At this point you have a complete architecture laid out of the problem, with everything that's salient and how these elements interact with each other. This is a much more complete model than a one-dimensional pro-con list, that doesn't properly capture relationships. With this model, which may take days, weeks or months to develop you can start diving into creative new solutions. What happens if you stress the importance of one salient player, and dimm another? What if you change a relationship? What if you turn a fundamental assumption on its head? If you can identify the unquestioned assumptions everyone else are building on top of, and change it—that's when something new and exciting appears. While this may not always be something you need to put the full effort into, I see it the same way as asking yourself the question of how you can make something 10x better. It's not necessarily about 10xing, but rather about putting your mind there and see what happens when you think really big. Does that change anything?

http://frwk.timeraiser.ca/uploads/5/6...

Coming up with these original ideas of course requires mastery over the subject at hand. You can't expect to go through this model unless you know it inside out. It can take years of experience to understand everything that carries salience and its relationship to everything else.

Another powerful mental model introduced by the book is that of how Experience, Tools and Stance relate to one another. Everyone has a stance, or an attitude. This stance is informed by the tools we have, which in turn is guided by the experiences we've accumulated. When we have a stance, we apply various tools, which leads to new experiences. I think that this is a useful construct to think about biases and our unconscious reaffirmation of them as well.

http://image.slidesharecdn.com/integr...

This book is filled with examples of people who've executed integrative thinking in the real world. The mental models introduced are powerful, and useful. I recommend this book.

[Jer]

A snippit from Robert Morris's review on Amazon.com
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As I began to read this brilliant book, I was reminded of what Doris Kearns reveals about Abraham Lincoln in Team of Rivals. Specifically, that following his election as President in 1860, Lincoln assembled a cabinet whose members included several of his strongest political opponents: Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War (who had called Lincoln a "long armed Ape"), William H. Seward as Secretary of State (who was preparing his acceptance speech when Lincoln was nominated), Salmon P. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury (who considered Lincoln in all respects his inferior), and Edward Bates as Attorney General who viewed Lincoln as a well-meaning but incompetent administrator but later described him as "very near being a perfect man."
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[Miriam Holsinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was expecting this to be another cheesy business book all about how to be successful if only you follow these tens steps... Instead it was actually quite insightful with a clear guide of the benefits to being able to hold contradicting ideas in your head and ruminate on them to come up with new innovative solutions.

The author blew my mind in the first few chapters when he clearly pointed out that what we think of as reality, is just a model of reality we construct with the bits of data we can absorb. While I am familiar with this concept from a Buddhist perspective, it never occurred to me to view it in a business modeling perspective and use it to navigate disagreeing perspectives to formulate innovation. Brilliant!

[Shane Parrish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger Martin talks about the value of integrative thinking and keeping the entire problem in your mind.
"The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each.

[...]

Integrative thinkers don’t break a problem into independent pieces and work on each piece separately. They keep the entire problem firmly in mind while working on its individual parts."

One of the keys to integrative thinking is the mindset that conflicting ideas, styles, and approaches are desired not feared.

[Jee · Rating 2 out of 5]

The stories of the successful business leadership figures the author interviewed were interesting. The theory being laid out throughout the book, however, doesn’t explain the very possible cases where such integrative thinking may have led to failure or didn’t survive the challenges - survivor bias. Some example cases he uses in the early chapters felt a bit forced to fit his theories too. Overall a fun read but wouldn’t be the first book I’d recommend on the topic.

[Lex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find the link between profiles particularly strong, nor was this useful guidance on how to find the third option - just demonstration that some successful people have found the third option. It felt more like he was looking for proof of his thesis than that the information he had led strongly to the opposable mind conclusion

[الهام · Rating 3 out of 5]

راجر مارتین در کتاب «ذهن تقابل‌پذیر» بیش از 30 داستان موفقیت کسب‌وکارها را روایت کرده که در میان آن‌ها شرکت‌های بزرگی از قبیل مجموعه هتل‌های فورسیزنز، شرکت پراکتر اند گمبل و ایبِی هستند. ایده نام کتاب از انگشت شست آمده است که اگر موقعیتش در تقابل با سایر انگشتان نبود، توانایی‌های انسان‌ها در استفاده از دستانشان بسیار محدود می‌بود.

مارتین در این کتاب به جای تمرکز بر روی کارهای انجام‌شده توسط مدیران موفق، روی شیوه تفکر آن‌ها تمرکز کرده است. او در طی بررسی‌های مبسوطش به این نتیجه رسیده که افراد موفق در کسب‌وکار شیوه‌ای منحصربه‌فرد در تفکر و تصمیم‌گیری دارند که به آن تفکر همبند نام می‌دهد. تفکر همبند به معنی تواناییِ در ذهن داشتن دو ایده‌ی متناقض به طور همزمان و خلق ایده‌ای مبتکرانه از ترکیب آن‌هاست. درواقع در شیوه‌ی تفکر همبند انتخاب بین این یا آن اتفاق نمی‌افتد و با در نظر داشتن جنبه‌های مثبت هر گزینه، گزینه‌ی سومی خلق می‌شود که می‌تواند جهشی بزرگ ایجاد کند.

در این کتاب می‌خوانیم: «متفکران همبند متوجهند که جهان محدودیت‌هایی به آن‌ها اعمال می‌کند، اما آن‌ها به اتفاق باور دارند که با تفکر سخت و صبورانه می‌توانند نتیجه‌ای بهتر از گزینه‌های نامطلوب موجود بیابند.»

کتاب را انتشارت هارواد بیزنس ریویو منتشر کرده و نشر معنا ترجمه‌ی آن را به تازگی منتشر کرده است. کوتاه و خوش‌خوان است و برای علاقمندان به حوزه‌ی مدیریت و کسب‌وکار می‌تواند بسیار مفید باشد.

[Toni Tassani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through examples of leaders in companies such as P&G, Red Hat or Four Seasons Hotels the author presents the his idea of "Integrative Thinking": the capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in the head and produce a superior one. It's about going away from "either-or" thinking.
The author suggests a process and tools to cultivate this Opposable Mind (with the idea of the opposable thumbs).
He talks about models of reality, filters, introduces tools from George Lakoff and Chris Argyris, and introduces System Dynamics.

It's not a groundbreaking book, but connects a few interesting pieces.

[Isaac Perez Moncho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good, but I was expecting more from it.
I bought this book because the author was interviewed in a podcast I listened to and I was impressed by his way of thinking.
The book does have little nuggets of useful information and mainly explores the theme of not making trade-offs to achieve success in ways that making the trade-offs would not have made possible.
It kind of makes you believe you should ditch trade-offs and not compromise ever, which I think it's unrealistic. However, it is a good reminder that sometimes you should not compromise to achieve more.

[DM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ca lectura pentru cultură generală, e ok, ca utilitate deja - funcție de experiența fiecăruia. Personal, mi-s utile dacă comasam, 3 pagini. Nu pot să spun că e revoluționară așa cum se recomandă și nici indispensabilă. Pentru că o carte cu așa temă poate doar vinde idei nu și soluții.

[Cathy Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I named my consulting business "Creative Option C" to stand for the alternative that people must create whenever they appear to be deadlocked between two other choices. For example, House Republicans are insisting that lowering taxes and cutting entitlement spending is the only way to reduce the deficit and grow the economy. President Obama and Senate Democrats say that ending tax cuts for the wealthiest among us and investing more in the middle class in the short term is the path to the same end. Both have staked out their positions and dug in for the battle. But both sides want to achieve the same goal. They need to create an option that works for everybody.

I believe that option always exists.

Hegel called it Synthesis.

Covey called it the Third Alternative.

Fisher and Ury called the process for getting there "principled negotiation."

None of these things involve "compromise" or "hard trade-offs." They involves commitment to the relationships, commitment to the shared desired outcomes, and creativity.

Now here comes a renowned business professor who has studied the decision making styles of great leaders and concluded that the best ones avoid making trade-offs. They don't panic when presented with apparently opposing viewpoints: they investigate, look for common ground, and invent something new. There is a method to this kind of process, a method that can be taught and learned. Dr. Martin brilliantly weaves storytelling with analysis to provide us all with a great how-to. Thanks, professor! Somebody should send a couple dozen cases of this book to Washington DC!

[Vinos Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read per #malcolmgladwell 🙃 and now #metoo 😜
The premise of this book is this quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald - "the test of first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function"
The #book highlights the fact that the world we live in is #multidimensional and our default internal factory setting of sticking to certain #mentalmodels as true and be trapped in #confirmationbias such that we exclude all other models of #reality that exist is such a limiting factor for our #experience and #exploration .. #rogermartin gives a #framework to cultivate an #opposablemind and myriad of real life business examples to bring home this amazing ability :)
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Some great quotes :
* Integrative thinkers don't flinch from considering multidirectional and nonlinear causal relationships
* Fundamentally the conventional #thinker prefers to accept the world as it is. The integrative thinker welcomes the challenge of shaping the world for the better * Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one
* One factory preset of the human mind is a tendency to assume that our models of reality are identical to reality itself * Our first impulse is to determine which one represents reality and which one is unreal and wrong, and then we campaign against the idea we reject * Our mental models are hypotheses rather than the truth
* Specialists aren't optimally suited to solve the biggest problems businesses face
#nonfictionbooks #lovebooks #read #bookstagram #reading #followforfollowback #bookshelf #bookquotes #lovereading #like #love #follow #mindset #mindfulness #think

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I noticed this in a bookshop when the phrase "integrative thinking" had been floating around my thinking for a little while. So I was intrigued about how someone would define this concept and discuss its usefulness.

The author is the Dean of Toronto's main business school and he writes about how organization leaders use "integrative thinking" to come up with novel and successful solutions.

There are times when the author's definition can seem a bit too close to the old trope of "these, antithese, synthese" but what he actually means is something more interesting: integrative thinkers conceive of novel solutions by seeing beyond the (usually) two diametric alternatives. They do this by using a set of mental tools, of which the three most interesting for me were:

- Generative reasoning: using logic to understand what could be.
- Causal modeling: accepting that many causal relationships are multidimensional and non-linear and intelligently making sense of this complexity.
- Assertive inquiry: using the inevitable differences in people's mental models as a means of understanding causality more deeply. As a behavior, this basically means doing the opposite of what most of us do most of the time - dig our heals in and defend our own point of view.

It's a stimulating read . The real test of these types of books is whether I think I'll revisit them and the answer with this one is definitely yes.

[Santosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The key idea behind this book is to help business thinkers see beyond the obvious tradeoffs. The author proposes that it is integrative thinking that is the force behind some of the most innovative and successful models that are driving new growth. The cases cited include RedHat, Issy Sharps' Four Seasons Hotels, AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health. When some of these cases are presented in the form of a narrative or a case study, the essence of the breakthrough that each of these thinkers achieved is unfortunately lost. What isn't clear in the minds of the reader, what the book does not help stimulate, is that at the time these models were being evolved each of these thinkers were truly presented with choices they intuitively felt as mediocre. I imagine that it's hard to present this lack of choice without falling into the obvious. This in-turn fueled the search for a model that when finally executed, brought about the key benefits that either choices lacked and at the same time helped unlock previously untapped market demand.

[Jay Rain · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating - 6.9

An intriguing opening w the Lee-Chin example & the shortcomings of other business reads but the Integrative Thinking concept falls short as it is more business sense than a new way of thinking

Other shortcomings include fellatio-like examples/accolades that don't really prove a point & the constant Rotman promotion that is littered throughout; Be a little bit better everyday is a good edict

[Aydın Tezcan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tavsiye edebileceğim bir kitap değil ne yazık ki.
Birkaç güzel örneği barındıran bölümleri var ama 50-60 sayfada rahatlıkla anlatılacak bir konuyu tekrarlarla çok uzatmış.
Zıt fikirlerin harmanlanması ile 3.bir sentez fikir oluşturma temelinde bir metodu örneklerle tekrar tekrar anlatmış.
Bu tür kitapları sanki bir kitabı okumakla tüm hayatımızın akışını değiştirmek mümkünmüş gibi bir fikir üstüne kurulu kişisel gelişim kitaplarına benzetiyorum.
Sözün özü, bu kitapla zaman kaybetmeyin.

[Dan Kalmar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. So good, in fact, that I read it twice. Essentially breaks down the fact that in business, successful leaders don't choose between either/or situations, they find distinct value in a new option that takes the best of both without any of the tradeoffs. Well written and a quick read.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great concept, boring book

Suffers from business/executive book inflation syndrome. The first three chapters are great and are all you need to read. Skip the rest and do something productive with your life instead.

[Philip Binkley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched. Interesting success stories shared.

[Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The simple idea of finding a new solution that lies within two different existing solutions is something that will stick with me throughout my career. Too often I take the information given to me and treat it as reality. The six stances and the discussion of finding better models will serve us well, as we work for an organization that is not satisfied with good enough or the way we’ve always done something. We are constantly striving to learn how to work smarter and to leverage new ideas, and the concepts in this book will help us in our processing of how to do that.

I appreciated how Martin was able to not only simplify the concepts he wanted the reader to walk away with, but also bring visuals to them. It was the concepts laid out in figures were the things that most stuck out to me as I read. These figures allowed me to look at the concepts holistically and snap photos of them to be able to refer back to them in the future. The process of thinking and deciding was especially interesting to me, going from Salience to Causality to Architecture to Resolution, and the distinction between how normal thinkers and integrative thinkers go about their process.

A few quotes I liked:

“Everybody can do ‘or;’ everybody can do trade-offs. But you’re not going to win if you’re in a trade-off game.” – Page 72

“In considering salience, causality, and architecture, the integrative thinkers we studied didn’t retreat into simplification and specialization. They waded into untidiness and complexity, confident they’d find an elegant resolution in the end.” - Page 91

Looking at my process of thinking and deciding, I can see I have plenty of room to grow. I also see many opportunities to cultivate my stances on how I approach problems and existing models. Two examples that jump out right away are reaching our goals this year and recruiting and developing more leaders. We are always searching for new ways to approach recruiting new leaders, and there may just be an answer living between two existing conflicting ideas. This book has been insightful to me in my efforts to grow in my thought processes.

[Andrew Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable, albeit light book on how to think about dilemmas. Martin makes two essential arguments.

First, we must remember that how we view the world is always a set of models. Should your business aim to serve a local community intimately, or a global community remotely? Are you high quality and high price, or low cost but also lower quality? etc. These forms don't exist as real things, but are ways of understanding the world.

Second, as creative models of reality, we can and should try and break through them to find new ways of operating. Martin's case studies all feature business leaders who rejected taking path A "OR" B, and developed path C. The global hotel chain with a local touch, the business which offered a free product but global reliability etc.

Martin offers useful guidance about how to rethink issues, such as what factors we consider salient, what tools we apply, what stance we take towards the question, and related factors of having both the courage, high standards and patience to work through such challenges. There's little here about why some dilemmas may not be so resolvable, but we probably over estimate how fixed they really are (see point 1).

The only thing i found slightly weird - and I'm assuming its deliberate - was that a book entirely devoted to the role of opposing ideas and finding an artful0 synthesis makes no mention of Hegel, Marx or the dialectic style of thought. As many 19th century thinkers demonstrated - for instance Carl von Clausewitz - the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model can be extremely powerful. Even today it is still in good use. Yet there's not even a note about it. It must be deliberate, but I'm not entirely sure why.

Still, this is one of the better books on thinking that have a business-literature background. Akin to 'Essentialism' by Greg McKeown. It has triggered a few ideas already for my own teaching and research, which makes it a worthwhile - and enjoyably written - read.

[Chad Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Mostly a business book but would recommend to general readers who are interested in improving their ability to make decisions and find creative solutions to problems. I learned of this book from a list of Malcom Gladwell's favorite books and it did not disappoint.

While the overall gist could be summed up in a couple of sentences, as with so many of these type of books, reading about the actual steps and studying the various real-life stories and scenarios really drove the point home and makes applying the skill in your own life much more likely.

One concept that really resonated apart from Stance (how do you approach a decision or problem? do you view yourself as a problem solver and not afraid to fail or do you doubt your ability to actually find an optimal solution) was regarding the "contented model approach" vs. the "Optimistic model approach." We all mistake our unique models of reality with reality itself. The contented model approach finds a model that works and is contented that it must be the best model. In this model, the person only considers evidence that supports it (similar to confirmation bias). In the optimistic model approach the person acknowledges that there are probably innumerable ways to skin the cat and they are open to wading into contentious ideas and complexity to arrive at a better solution. It was difficult not to think about our current political situation where so many subscribe, with religiously fanatic fervor, to the woke dogma and chase with pitchforks any heretic that dares utter or hint at any other model or solution. I think we would all benefit by learning and applying the "optimistic model approach".

[Srinivasan Nanduri · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the heart of The Opposable Mind lies a powerful idea: the most successful leaders and problem-solvers don’t choose between opposing options—they hold tensions between conflicting ideas to create a new and superior solution. This ability, called integrative thinking, is not a rare gift but a skill anyone can develop with the right mindset and discipline.

Integrative Thinking Defined:
The ability to face conflicting ideas and generate a new model that draws from both, yet is better than either.

Four-Part Decision Process:
Salience – What information matters?
Causality – How do these elements relate?
Architecture – How do I structure the problem?
Resolution – What innovative solution emerges?

Personal Knowledge System:
A dynamic loop of Stance → Tools → Experience, showing how thought patterns evolve and can be redirected.

Six Elements of Integrative Stance:
3 beliefs about the world (models are constructs, oppositions are leverage, better ideas exist)
3 about the self (I can create, I can manage complexity, I will give it time)

Roger Martin offers a fresh, compelling take on leadership and decision-making. While some parts are anecdotal or philosophical, the book’s message is timeless and deeply relevant in today’s polarized, high-stakes environments. The storytelling is rich, the concepts are practical, and the model of integrative thinking is both inspiring and actionable.
✅ Worth reading today—especially if you're tired of binary thinking and want to build the muscles for creating better options.

[Warren Mcpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thinking about thinking. This is an exploration of complex decision making. "Integrative Thinking" is the alternative to the efficient decision making we use every day become accustomed to using for all decisions. This is partly a reminder that we tend to simplify and specialize in ways that at times can be limiting. This book looks at the process of decision making. In particular, significant decisions between conflicting options with unpalatable constraints create a situation where a deep understanding of conflicting perspectives and a commitment to synthesizing a clearly superior resolution can have a great payoff. The author walks through the understanding of self (stance), approach to problem-solving (tools), and experience. It is very interesting to raise the interplay between these factors to the level of conscious analysis. The author encouraged disciplined analysis of the outcomes of decision making and the importance of creativity for mastery of a field.
I suspect that many people for whom the techniques are accessible would implement them without reading the book. So I consider the outcomes of the study to be ambiguous. The outcomes are likely worthwhile and this is an excellent review of the topic.
This is a short, well written, and clear. The stories are inspiring. It is a very interesting and fun read.

[Marlise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting concept. However, it’s not very practical in application. It’s easy to observe after the fact but hard to implement unless you’re very experienced or naturally inclined this way. Martin weakly argues otherwise.

Cool stories, but very few that I haven’t read elsewhere already. Also, I find there is a startling difference in tone between business books written 1999-2007ish versus before or after this time. Most books written in that era seem to have a very assumptive, almost cocky way of telling you their ‘secret’ to success. As well, books written during that time seem to always have at least some of their ‘success examples’ to have flopped since then, which dates and ruins the credibility of the whole book. Anyway, I don’t recommend this one. It’s dated, hard to apply to real life or real business situations in 2018, and kind of boring.

[Andreea Zanfir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Autorul isi propune sa descifreze modul in care gandesc "liderii exemplari" si, pentru ca crede ca sunt prea multe carti ce lauda actiunea in detrimentul analizei, se decide sa se concentreze pe aceasta din urma.

In a nutshell, modelul poate fi redus la inlocuirea mentalitatii " ori - ori" cu una "si - si".

Partea mea preferata, insa, este cea in care discuta modul in care fiecare dintre noi isi sustinea propriul punct de vedere, convinsi ca este singurul adevar posibil:
- "credem ca ceea ce vedem este ceea ce exista cu adevarat".
- "pasim in lume cu "setari din fabrica" ceea ce ne determina sa facem o confuzie intre perceptii, care sunt constructii subiective, si realitatea obiectiva."

Nu a fost o carte revolutionara, in cazul meu, dar se citeste foarte repede si e o lectura placuta.

[Polina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming from the non-business background I always had a tendency to split one big problem into smaller pieces and figure them out one by one, so I am excited to learn about the limitations of this approach and eager to try integrative thinking in my field. In addition to that, I liked the anecdotes about the CEOs experiences. However, the author haven't presented any negative examples, when even the most powerful integrative thinker failed, I am sure there is no way to attain experience without failures, so even the greatest CEOs should have failed at some point. This probably shapes the toolbox of the person as well.
Also, it seemed to me that even though the author tried to figure out some sort of system or process of solving the complex problems, this reverse engineering it looks a bit artificial.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides some nice visual graphics to help one better understand the anatomy of models and the personal knowledge systems we use to build the models. Concepts are defined and some procedural steps outlined within the graphics. Real life examples are utilized as well to demonstrate how a particular concept was applied. However, while reading this book I always felt like I was on the cusp of discovering the secret of integrative thinking, but not there yet. Is it necessarily the author's fault? No, but in someway I felt like I was expecting more, maybe a layout of my own and from there fill-in the blanks for a conflict or issue I am encountering that could help the reader better understand.

[Robert Bogue]

Conflict is a good thing. Conflict between our fingers and our thumb – our opposable thumb – created the ability to create tools and ascend to the most dominant lifeform on the planet. In The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking, we learn how it wasn’t just the mechanics of our members but the integrative nature of our intelligence that has really allowed us to remain king of the biological mountain on this planet.

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