Inventing Elephants

The cashiers would ask "paper or plastic?" Being the type of person who first pulled out the reusable shopping bags instead is at the heart of Roger Martin's book The Opposable Mind. On a larger scale, it's the person who came up with a way to change the internal structure of a business or put the emphasis on a different aspect entirely in order to step away from trade-offs between cost and quality.

You might call it reaching both/and or coming up with a win/win solution. He calls it "integrative thinking" and defines it precisely as:

The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resoluton of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each.

Martin found that many of the successful business executives he interviewed shared a particular problem solving approach, the ability to hold two opposing ideas in their heads until they produced a synthesis superior to both of them.

While you can only get so practical when thinking about thinking, this book succeeds at leaving the reader with important takeaways. Martin first describes what he observed, providing a framework for the information. Then he transforms that information to present a way to build up the reader's ability to think with an opposable mind.

The Opposable Mind is written in a conversational style, as if Roger was helping you understand these concepts that he is passionate about over after-dinner drinks. It is filled with real-life stories that flesh out the specific concepts and includes a few hypothetical examples to trigger thought. Most of his examples are business related, as that is Martin's area of study, but he includes a few from other arenas to exhibit how the principles can be applied elsewhere.

This post is the first in a series that will cover the major topics of the book.

1. Book Review: The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin
2. How Integrative Thinkers Think Things Through
3. 6 Foundation Beliefs of an Opposable Mind
4. 3 Techniques for Moving Beyond Either/Or Thinking
5. Experiences Enhance the Opposable Mind
6. Integrative Thinking Beyond The Opposable Mind