Roger Martin is onto something here. His whole analysis resonates with what I have observed in top-flight programme directors and managers. The 'ability to deal with ambiguity' is only a description and is reactive to the environment programmes happen within. Martin's observations take this further: the leader creating opportunities or a breakthrough by integrative thinking.

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Product Description

Successful business leaders think fundamentally differently than others—in a more “integrative” and expansive way Emulating what successful leaders do is dangerous; instead, learn how these leaders think This “integrative thinking” can be taught; we can all learn how to do it, and experience the many benefits

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #155527 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

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

Review
What makes great CEOs stand out from their peers? This is the first book to really answer that question.

About the Author
Roger Martin is Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Martin is the author of The Responsibility Virus (2002 Basic Books) plus many articles in leading business publications including HBR, Business Week, Barron’s, and Fast Company. In this book, Martin’s focus is on business leaders from a wide range of global companies including Proctor & Gamble, the Four Seasons hotels, Red Hat Software, and Infosys.

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Customer Reviews

Does not deliver on what is a subject of great potential
The book tackles the subject of integrative thinking. The basic premise is that skilled leaders have the ability to hold two opposing ideas in their minds at once, and then reach a synthesis of both, that improves on each.

On the front cover it is described as "Brilliant and utterly convincing" by Malcolm Gladwell. This was not my experience as a reader. The book could go a lot further in motivating the reader, and you could easily fail to complete the whole book. The tendency to over use a small number of case studies to prove a point is not especially convincing eg the example of procter and gamble.

One aspect that is a real insight is the work on mapping the mind - chapter five. The material on - your personal knowledge system for example, (see figure 5.1 p 103) merits a look. However much of the book could be easily be summarised in an 8-10 page article.

Another alternative is the work of Honey and Mumford, on learning styles. This has been around for a while and is first class in its breadth and depth. I have used their inventory for team building, management development etc. This I feel provides more insight into the thinking processes of managers than this book.

Stan Felstead - Interchange Resources UK.

Insights into business creativity
"Why didn't I think of that?" is a common reaction to other people's creative breakthroughs. In hindsight, the idea looks so simple, so elegant, so right, that you can't believe you missed it. But for some reason you did. Why? Can this sort of creativity be taught? Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, answers both questions in this beautiful systematization of creative problem solving. The good news is, it can be taught and Martin is a wonderful teacher. We think his ideas are so clear and logical, so obviously right, that you'll wonder why you didn't think of them.

The Power of Integrative Thinking

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."

Presumably Roger Martin agrees with me that Lincoln possessed what Martin views as "the predisposition and the capacity to hold two [or more] diametrically opposed ideas" in his head and then "without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other," was able to "produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea." Throughout his presidency, Lincoln frequently demonstrated integrative thinking, a "discipline of consideration and synthesis [that] is the hallmark of exceptional businesses [as well as of democratic governments] and those who lead them."

The great leaders whom Martin discusses (e.g. Martha Graham, George F. Kennan, Isadore Sharp, A.G. Lafley, Lee-Chin, and Bob Young) developed a capacity to consider what Thomas C. Chamberlain characterizes as "multiple working hypotheses" when required to make especially complicated decisions. Like Lincoln, they did not merely tolerate contradictory points of view, they encouraged them. Only in this way could they and their associates "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 [whatever its causes may be] in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each."

This process of consideration is based on a quite different model than the more commonly employed scientific method based on, as Martin explains, the working hypothesis that is used "to test the validity of a single explanatory concept through trial and error and experimentation." He rigorously examines the process of integrative thinking in terms of four constituent parts: salience, causality, architecture, and resolution. He devotes a separate chapter to each, citing dozens of real-world examples, and then (in Chapter 5), he introduces a framework within which his reader can also develop integrative thinking capacity.

For me, some of the most interesting and most valuable material is provided in Chapter 7 as Martin explains how integrative thinkers "connect the dots." He cites Taddy Blecher (co-founder of CIDA City Campus, an innovative South African university) as one example. I think the details are best revealed within their context. Suffice to say now that for Blecher, "existing models are to his mind just models, each with something useful to offer." However, his objective was to find a better model of post-secondary education and Martin examines Blecher's use of "two of the three most powerful tools at the disposal of integrative thinkers," generative reasoning and causal modeling, to achieve that objective. He also discusses a third tool, assertive inquiry, and offers aspiring integrative thinkers a few lessons along the way.

In the next and final chapter, Martin suggests that "mastery without originality becomes rote" whereas "originality without mastery is flaky if not entirely random." Successful leaders integrate both while strengthening their skills and nurturing their imagination. They realize that existing models can be informative but are imperfect. They leverage opposing models, convinced that better models exist and can be found. And they "wade into complexity," allowing themselves time to be creative as they expand and nourish their personal knowledge systems. Throughout their own process of discovery, readers will be guided and informed by what Roger Martin so generously and eloquently shares in this brilliant book.

Those who share my high regard for it are urged to check out David Whyte's The Heart Aroused and Judgment co-authored by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis as well as Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future, Justin Menkes's Executive Intelligence, Richard Ogle's Smart World, Albert Borgmann's Holding On to Reality, and Gary Hamel's The Future of Management.