The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking [Hardcover]

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 inThe 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 callsintegrative thinkingcreatively 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, andThe Opposable Mindhelps you master this vital skill.

Roger Martinis 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 toHarvard Business Reviewand other leading publications and has published nine books, includingPlaying to Win,The Opposable Mind, andCreating Great Choices.

Martin makes a compelling argument for a paradoxical approach to problem-solving. --BusinessWeek, November 26, 2007

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