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The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking

3.74  ·  Rating details ·  917 ratings  ·  101 reviews
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 ...more
Hardcover, 224 pages
Published October 29th 2007 by Harvard Business Review Press (first published 2007)
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Average rating 3.74  · 
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Simon Eskildsen
May 10, 2016 rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition
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
...more
Jer
Jul 15, 2008 marked it as to-read
Shelves: wish-list
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
...more
Miriam Holsinger
Dec 12, 2012 rated it it was amazing
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
...more
Cathy Allen
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 ...more
Sam
Sep 21, 2012 rated it it was ok
Shelves: business, psychology
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,
...more
Santosh
Mar 27, 2013 rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition
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 ...more
Lex
Aug 07, 2015 rated it it was ok
Shelves: non-fiction
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
Dan Kalmar
Jan 13, 2010 rated it it was amazing
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.
Philip Binkley
Feb 28, 2014 rated it really liked it
Well researched. Interesting success stories shared.
Riley
Feb 05, 2018 rated it really liked it
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 ...more
Vinos Samuel
Dec 22, 2018 rated it it was amazing
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
...more
Warren Mcpherson
Sep 10, 2017 rated it really liked it
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 ...more
Polina
Sep 03, 2019 rated it liked it  ·  review of another edition
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 ...more
Marlise
Feb 23, 2018 rated it liked it
Shelves: non-fiction
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
...more
J.
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 ...more
Magpie
Jan 16, 2020 rated it really liked it
Good solid book.

Enjoyed how in the beginning of the book he gently dragged the stereotypes of other business books.

Great suggestions in understanding how people have different ideas of reality and taking the time to listen and understand.

As well as find solutions in apparently opposing situations.
David B
Oct 28, 2019 rated it liked it
The takeaways of the book about integrative thinking we're insightful, but could have been delivered in half the number of pages. The stories in the book felt repetitive and were difficult to distinguish because they were all so similar.
Anna
Jan 01, 2018 rated it liked it
The book is interesting and provides some amazing points about improving one's thought process. However, it is sometimes hard to understand what the author is trying to say or how to actually apply the principles nd become better at integrative thinking.
Joseph
Aug 26, 2019 rated it liked it  ·  review of another edition
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.
Andres Castañaza
Jun 04, 2019 rated it really liked it
You say yes, I say no, you say stop and I say go. Find the middle. Create Win to win situations.
Laura
Jun 15, 2018 rated it really liked it
The opposoble mind is, in fact, the kind of mind that has intelligence within it, and enough openness to let it be. Nice reading.
Jeff Begley
Apr 06, 2018 rated it did not like it
Shelves: abandoned
After about 50 pages it just became tedious.
Amrith
Sep 10, 2017 rated it liked it
Quite good. Though, it sort of tries to fit everything to a template, like most business books tend to.
Benjamin Arp
Oct 31, 2018 rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition
I highly recommend this book. I think it is one of the most helpful books about how to think in an age of sound bites, propaganda and manipulation.
Laurel Morris
Jan 23, 2020 rated it it was amazing
Brilliantly bridges the systems engineering mindset to many brilliant business individuals processes for forging paths unimaginable to competition.
Rohit Yadav
May 14, 2017 rated it liked it
Integrative thinkers believe that their are better model of doing things.
Set high standards, take responsibility, persists under you solve the problem, & remain patient.
Michael D. Kondratick
Feb 19, 2017 rated it really liked it
A challenge to think differently especially when faced with conventional wisdom.
Fred Darbonne
Feb 27, 2014 rated it really liked it
Roger Martin presents the discipline of “integrative thinking,” an application of systems thinking that allows a leader to hold two apparently opposing choices or problems in creative tension and, rather than choosing between the two, instead generate a creative resolution with an innovative new possibility, a third way. This read would benefit anyone who must make difficult decisions, find creative resolutions to opposing dilemmas, or who desires to advance their creative thinking skills.

...more
Brent
Mar 17, 2008 rated it it was amazing
Shelves: leadership
This is a must read for anyone wanting to understand how to leverage creative thinking and understand how to come up with "and" solutions instead of "either or." The main concept is built upon a feedback system of salience, causality, architecture, and resolution. An integrative thinker will consider more features of a problem salient, consider multidirectional and nonlinear causality, visual the whole while working on individual parts, and search for creative resolutions of tensions. Another ...more
Jason Walker
Dec 13, 2011 rated it liked it
What do you say to a book that mixes politics and modern dance? This is an interesting book and well worth the time to read. For anyone putting together a business model or trying to reinvent the workplace this book is a great read. It has a further reach in that it is a reminder that in a modern civics situation where taxes and government are compared to a million other things we are reminded that those comparisons don't weigh anything other than the politics: we can be good stewards of public ...more
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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, ...more
“simplification, 80–20 style, leads to more business as usual.” 1 likes
“You can’t make a renaissance person anymore, because the range of what you would need to do is just impossible. But you could actually assemble a renaissance team.”7 The integrative thinkers rely on their “renaissance teams” to broaden salience, maintain sophisticated causality, and create a holistic architecture in their drive for creative resolution.” 0 likes
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