PDF Summary:The Opposable Mind, by Roger Martin

What is it about successful leaders that lets them solve problems other people find intractable? In The Opposable Mind, Roger L. Martin says the key is integrative thinking—the ability to consider opposing ideas and create a solution from the best parts of both. While other business experts focus on leaders’ ability to execute plans, Martin argues that understanding how successful leaders think is more valuable than simply copying what they do.

In this guide, we’ll examine the beliefs common to top leaders, the way they come up with ideas, and their ability to toggle between creative thinking and falling back on their experience. We’ll show how to apply these skills while also exploring other experts’ ideas about how people think and make decisions. We’ll describe various routes to stronger mental habits that may overlap with Martin’s ideas and some common mental barriers that can make applying Martin’s advice challenging.

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Forward-thinking logic requires that you use reason to explore possibilities instead of certainties. Martin explains that as opposed to more traditional reasoning methods that use pre-existing models and data to form conclusions, this technique uses logic to create new conjectures in response to information or circumstances that don't fit existing business theories. For example, imagine that your business is about to introduce a new product that doesn’t resemble anything else in the market. You can’t do effective customer research for a product that doesn’t exist yet, but forward-thinking logic can help you explore different possible market segments your product might serve and how to best approach them.

(Shortform note: One figure who applied Martin’s principle frequently—though not always successfully—was Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. In his official biography, Walter Isaacson recounts that Jobs’s intuition let him see possibilities others missed. For instance, in the early ’80s, Jobs envisioned what future computers would look like and created the point-and-click system we use today. However, Jobs wasn’t a perfect oracle, as evidenced by his failure to anticipate the popularity of burning music to CDs. Nevertheless, Isaacson says that when Jobs missed a trend, his response was to take the next leap, such as creating the iPod, making CDs obsolete. In this way, Jobs showed that exploring possibilities is a habit you can’t afford to quit.)

The next thing Martin says successful leaders do is imagine cause and effect in their full complexity. Most of us think of cause and effect as a linear progression from action to result, but reality is far more complicated. For instance, the success of a product might depend on a wide range of factors, such as the price point, marketing, and time of release. Plus, successful and unsuccessful ventures often fall into feedback cycles where effects trigger causes that further amplify effects—such as when bad word-of-mouth negatively impacts customers’ perceptions of a product, which leads to even worse online reviews, and so on. Martin writes that effective leaders know that causality isn’t a simple, straight line.

(Shortform note: A powerful tool for studying causality that wasn’t fully developed at the time of Martin’s writing is that of “big data,” huge data sets that organizations can analyze for information. In Everybody Lies, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz explains that traditional cause-and-effect experiments required a lot of funding, time, and resources, but access to big data eliminates those problems, making it easier for modern leaders to explore causal complexity. For example, you can consult pre-existing data rather than running new experiments or perform simple A/B tests, where you randomly select groups of users and show them different versions of a product or feature. )

Rounding out his discussion of imaginative reason, Martin argues that you should respond to opposing views with questions instead of arguments. This is the practical application of Martin’s “useful belief” that you can learn from other people’s differing perspectives. If you take the time to question others about their views and the reasons behind them, you’ll expand your perspective and perhaps discover a few of your own false assumptions. Even if you’re certain that someone else’s views are wrong, understanding why they differ from yours can lead to insights you can further explore. Having as many perspectives on the issue as possible can help you find more creative solutions to business problems.

(Shortform note: Martin’s advice to engage opposing views with curiosity is an intellectual solution to an emotional problem—the reflex to become defensive. The authors of Crucial Conversations explain that people rarely become defensive because of the content of what someone else is saying, but rather because they don’t feel safe. Therefore, to discuss a point where you disagree with someone, you should monitor the conversation’s safety level—stay alert to physical and emotional cues that your conversation is about to become heated, such as you or the other person becoming silent or agitated. By asking questions as Martin suggests, you help create safety by showing the other person that you respect their opinion.)

Originality Versus Experience

Lastly, in explaining how innovative leaders think, Martin addresses the perceived dichotomy between experience and original thinking, writing that the most successful business leaders can toggle between their depth of experience and original thinking at will. While many people acknowledge the value of experience, they might also believe that those with years of work under their belts are stuck in their ways and incapable of fresh ideas. Martin insists that this isn’t the case: Meaningful experience and truly original thinking depend on and grow from each other. Experience without flexibility becomes stagnant and limiting, while original ideas with no basis in experience are unreliable and only randomly successful.

In the leaders whom Martin interviewed for his research, he found that experience acts as a springboard for innovative ideas. You gain experience through years of learning by repeated trial and error, which deepens your expertise in your field. This leads to innovation if you use your formative years to experiment, be spontaneous, and take risks. Instead of locking you into habitual behavior, this kind of experience will strengthen your capacity for original thinking and action.

Integration and Design

This aspect of integrative thinking is similar to design thinking, another problem-solving approach that emphasizes balancing knowledge and originality. However, while Martin focuses on reconciling opposites, design thinkers tend to be more process-oriented.

In The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman explains design thinking in separate stages: observation, idea generation, and testing. “Observation” is analogous to the years of experience and learning that Martin says effective leaders gain. During the idea generation phase, you switch on your originality to think of as many solutions as possible. Norman’s last stage is to test your ideas and repeat the process as needed, similar to the trial and error step that Martin places sooner if your aim is to learn integrative thinking instead.

Aside from relying on personal experience to fuel creativity, as Martin suggests, you can boost your creative thinking skills by drawing on and integrating other people’s creativity in addition to their opposing perspectives. In Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon argues that every “original” idea is influenced by others that came before, and accepting that truth relieves you from the pressure of creating something purely original. Instead, you should curate the influences you draw from by immersing yourself in specific thinkers’ work that aligns with your goals and values. When following Martin’s path, this has the advantage of compounding your personal experience with that of others.

How to Make Decisions

Now that we’ve elucidated the patterns of thinking that innovative leaders use, the question is how to put those skills into practice. Martin divides decision-making into three components—determining what information is important, exploring the ways that different factors relate to each other, and then merging the best aspects of different possible solutions. All the while, integrative thinkers acknowledge their perspectives’ limitations and the complexity of the problems they face.

Gather Important Information From All Sides

When faced with complex problems, necessity requires that we ignore most of the data and focus on whichever elements seem most pertinent. This selective attention shapes how we frame situations, but Martin says you must still gather data from multiple points of view. As stated earlier, different people arrive at different conclusions based on their particular sets of mental filters. These filters don’t just guide your judgments, but also what information you choose to ignore. For instance, sports fans often disagree on penalty calls because they disregard information that doesn’t support their preferred outcome. Therefore, when making important decisions, you have to recognize your bias and actively look for ways to negate it.

(Shortform note: This part of Martin’s advice can be hard to follow because everyone’s biases, including your own, are ingrained from an early age. In Biased, Jennifer Eberhardt explains that in assessing bias, you can’t just look at the information being presented; you also have to pay attention to what’s left unsaid. Additionally, you should beware of supposedly “impartial” information sources that may be biased if they stand to benefit from convincing you of their claims. In Designing the Mind, Ryan A. Bush offers a program to overcome your personal biases involving mindfulness practices, lots of study, and personal reflection, all of which help to clear your mental path to mastering Martin’s integrative thinking.)

If you can see beyond your flawed perspective, Martin writes that you can hold multiple points of view at once and explore the gap between opposing ideas, leading to more innovative solutions. This may be harder than it sounds because your brain automatically defaults to the assumption that your interpretation of reality is correct, limiting your ability to consider alternate perspectives. The trick is to know the difference between reality and your mind’s filtered perception. Martin argues that the most successful leaders do this—they can, in effect, “step outside” of a problem and evaluate it from every angle at once.

(Shortform note: In Thinking, Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman explores the nuances of the brain’s automatic “System 1” mode of thinking, which is fast but limited by assumptions and bias, and its slower “System 2” contemplation, which is less prone to errors and illusions. Martin’s advice for leaders implies that you can learn to engage System 2 thinking to override your automatic mind, but Kahneman points out that System 2 has a limited capacity for focused thought and is easily overloaded. Practice and experience can ease the load on System 2, but Kahneman recommends that you aim for a compromise and let your mind run in automatic System 1 when the cost of potential errors is low.)

Look at the Whole, Not Just the Pieces

The next thing Martin says that creative leaders do is embrace the inherent complexity of situations, resisting the urge to simplify problems to make them “easier to handle.” Simplifying issues leads to rote, half-baked solutions that aren’t likely to produce significant breakthroughs. Innovative thinkers, on the other hand, consider the wide range of cause and effect when they generate new ideas. For example, a restaurateur expanding their business to a new city may look beyond the common factors of location, marketing, and pricing to explore the region’s food culture, how people react to new businesses moving in, any seasonal habits that might affect people’s dining, and how shifting demographics might be changing the new city’s character.

(Shortform note: One danger in Martin’s suggestion to embrace complexity is that in some intractable problems, complexity can become a rabbit hole that you’ll never see the end of. Therefore, in Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths argue that the best way to solve such problems is to strategically embrace imperfection as well. For instance, in the technology sector, when computers deal with extremely complex problems, they might calculate an answer half as good as the perfect solution in one quadrillionth of the time. Likewise, when solving problems in business, we can often achieve “good enough” successes more quickly and efficiently than we can reach some perfect ideal. Acknowledging complexity as Martin recommends may often mean looking for answers that are merely workable and moving on.)

One form of simplification that hinders creative thinking is specialization, which often gives someone a narrow focus that ignores the bigger picture. The solution Martin offers is to assemble a diverse team with complementary skills and perspectives to draw from. As a leader, then, you can keep the big picture of a project in mind while fostering constant interaction among team members with a variety of backgrounds. Collaboration helps prevent the tunnel vision that results from specialization, enabling you to find creative answers to business problems. Martin adds that your goal shouldn’t be to make everyone a generalist, but to combine specialists’ knowledge in ways that lead to innovative outcomes.

(Shortform note: Martin’s response to overspecialization goes against the grain of long-standing corporate decisions to hire candidates who fit their companies’ culture, a practice that’s frequently criticized as a slippery slope toward discrimination. However, in Leading Change, John P. Kotter writes that while changing a company’s culture is necessary to keep up with the times, he still argues in favor of hiring based on cultural fit, suggesting that cultural change must be approached slowly. In Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh suggests that instead of hiring for cultural fit, you should look for candidates who will actively improve the company’s culture. Doing so can bring a diversity of values in addition to the diversity of skills Martin touts.)

Reject the “Either/Or” Option

Martin says that once innovative leaders have assembled all the different points of view that suggest a variety of potential ways to move forward, they seek solutions that embody the best of every option instead of deciding between them. For instance, the hypothetical restaurateur mentioned earlier might be deciding between opening a high-class eatery or an affordable family restaurant. Instead of choosing one option only, they might decide to merge the best aspects of both and devise a way to provide families with a high-end dining experience they can afford. Martin argues that the business world’s most successful breakthroughs come when leaders turn their backs on conventional options.

(Shortform note: It may seem as if Martin is promoting compromise as a way to solve problems, but this aspect of the integrative approach is more in line with systems thinking, which looks at connections between different factors that influence your decisions and finds synergies that may not be apparent when considering issues in isolation. In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge explains that to effectively solve business problems, you have to see your organization and the world it interacts with as one big system. When you recognize how one course of action affects every part of the system—such as how the restaurant in the example above interacts with a variety of customers in different ways—you can find the innovative solutions Martin speaks of.)

As opposed to conventional thinking, which tends to simplify problems, weed out tangential variables, and accept “good enough” solutions, Martin asserts that innovative thinking produces new possibilities and reveals the world’s limitless potential. Over time, this type of thinking can raise your aspirations—once you step away from the quick and easy path, you might discover how much more you can actually achieve. Martin writes that creative leaders and thinkers who see all points of view and nourish the best aspects of every option are the ones who are pushing society forward. If you can cultivate an “opposable mind” via integrative thinking, you too can experience its transformative power in the business world and beyond.

(Shortform note: Martin’s claims echo the sentiments of Peter F. Drucker, who’s widely regarded as the father of modern management. In Innovation and Entrepreneurship Drucker describes innovation as a process to find ways to improve every aspect of business and life. What’s more, Drucker argues that innovative thinking can be approached methodically and that leaders can adopt a systematic approach to discover new ways of living and doing business. Like Martin, Drucker offers practical guidance to leaders looking for innovative solutions, though Drucker also looks beyond the top leaders to show how innovative thinking can be cultivated throughout an entire organization.)