The Opposable Mind

Integrative thinkers don't break a problem into independent pieces and work on each piece separately. They keep the entire problem firmly in mind while working on its individual parts. […] integrative thinkers allow complexity to compound as they design their decisions. The complexity presents a cognitive challenge that integrative thinkers welcome, because they know that complexity brings along in its train an opportunity for a breakthrough resolution.

INTRODUCTION

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• They have the predisposition and the capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they're able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea. Integrative thinking is my term for this processor more precisely this discipline of consideration and synthesis that is the hallmark of exceptional businesses and the run them.
• thinkers who exploit opposing ideas to construct a new solution enjoy a built-in advantage over thinkers who can consider only one model at a time.
• In business, we often look at decisions as a series of either-or propositions, of trade-offs. Integrative thinking shows us a way past the binary limits of either-or. It shows us that there's a way to integrate the advantages of one solution without canceling out the advantages of an alternative solution. "the choice not between, but of”
• definition of Integrative Thinking: The ability to 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 in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each
• I begin the exploration of integrative thinking by breaking that thinking process into its four constituent parts: salience, causality, architecture, and resolution.
• Whatever we decide, we'll arrive at our choice by considering a set of features we deem salient; creating a mental model of the causal relationships among those features; arranging those causal relationships into an architecture intended to produce a specific outcome; thereby reaching a resolution of the problem at hand.

• Sharp's resolution produced a system of reinforcing activities, each of which fits with and strengthens the whole, to outperform the dominant models in the industry
• I would argue the key difference between Sharp and other shrewd veterans of the lodging business was Sharp's willingness to consider a broader set of salient features, delve into more complicated causal relationships, and view the decision he was facing holistically. Those three features of his thinking pattern enabled him to find a way around the unpleasant trade-offs he faced.
• 4 Step Process for Integrative Thinking:
• The first difference between integrative thinkers and conventional thinkers is that integrative thinkers take a broader view of what is salient. More salient features make for a messier problem. But integrative thinkers don't mind the mess. In fact, they welcome it, because the mess assures them that they haven't edited out features necessary to the contemplation of the problem as a whole. They welcome complexity because they know the best answers arise from complexity.
• Second, integrative thinkers don't flinch from considering multidirectional and nonlinear causal relationships.
• The third difference between integrative and conventional thinkers is in the architecture of their decisions. Integrative thinkers don't break a problem into independent pieces and work on each piece separately. They keep the entire problem firmly in mind while working on its individual parts. As they do with salience and causality, integrative thinkers allow complexity to compound as they design their decisions. The complexity presents a cognitive challenge that integrative thinkers welcome, because they know that complexity brings along in its train an opportunity for a breakthrough resolution.
• Fourth and finally, the integrative thinker will always search for creative resolution of tensions, rather than accept unpleasant tradeoffs.

• With respect to architecture, the most common failing of conventional thinking is the tendency to lose sight of the whole decision. It may be easier to dole out pieces of a decision to various corporate functions, but that ensures that no one will take a holistic view of a particular problem. And in the absence of a holistic view, a mediocre result is the likely outcome.
• Integrative thinking produces possibilities, solutions, and new ideas. It creates a sense of limitless possibility.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein

• One factory preset of the human mind is a tendency to assume that our models of reality are identical to reality itself.
• Our first impulse is to determine which one represents reality and which one is unreal and wrong, and then we campaign against the idea we reject. But in rejecting one model as unreal, we miss out on all the value that can be realized by holding in mind two opposing models at the same time. We disengage the opposable mind before it can seek a creative resolution.
• "It's not a choice of this model or that model," says Sterman. "They're all wrong. See what you can do to combine those multiple perspectives and enhance the quality of your mental model."
• Like the other integrative thinkers, the three leaders were able to separate models from reality. They were free to hold the models up to analysis and scrutiny without needing to refute one or the other. This crucial step enabled them to explore the tensions between the opposing models and gather clues pointing toward a better model.

Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Albert Einstein

• For Graham, composition, choreography, costumes, and sets were all part of an interdependent, integrated whole, In a sharp break from conventional dance practice, she explicitly considered the whole while working on every element of the production, rather than doling out each element to independent specialists.\
• "Organizations," he says in an article with colleague Daniel Levinthal, "seek to transform confusing, interactive environments into less confusing, less interactive ones by decomposing domains and treating the resulting sub-domains as autonomous."
• what's popularly known as the 80/20 rule. The rule states that for 20 percent of the maximum effort, we can get 80 percent of the ideal result. Applied to the cognitive domain, the rule says that 20 percent of the maximum mental effort will yield 80 percent of the perfect answer. Further, the rule suggests that only an obsessive or pathological perfectionist would invest 80 percent more effort in the hope of reaching an answer that would at best be only 20 percent better.
• But Sharp actually preferred a complicated picture, because he understood, at least implicitly, that simplification, 80-20 style, leads to more business as usual. Truly creative resolutions, Sharp realized, spring from complexity.
• Simplification makes us favor linear, unidirectional causal relationships, even if reality is more complex and multidirectional.
• Specialization is a variant of simplification. If the simplifying mind attempts to understand the whole picture by making it more shallow and superficial than it really is, the specialist attempts to preserve depth and thoroughness by masking out all but a few square inches of a vast canvas. Like simplification, specialization allows us to cope with what might be overwhelming complexity.
• Functional specialization encourages the sequential or parallel resolution of discrete parts of a business problem. The result is that what is optimal from the perspective of one function will take precedence over what is optimal for the firm as a whole.
• "The reason that the world is cut into little pieces is because it is easier to deal with, explains Hilary Austen Johnson, who studied under Jim March. "Once you start integrating things, you end up with a much more complex problem than you had before. It's harder to work with. Things are more in flux. You get more interactions between things, so the knowledge that you have has to be more robust."
• But experienced integrative thinkers learn to draw a distinction between chaos and complexity. “Any situation has a certain number of alternatives, but if you are doing system thinking, even for complex problem, and you realize what is the system, what are the subsystems, what are the sub-subsystems, and you define their interrelationship as well as you can, you will start seeing some daylight, how to get out of it. The complexity if you have some logical inputs and also have a system structure I don't think it looks that bad.”
• the integrative thinkers I interviewed knew they would need plenty of help to reach creative resolutions. They chose their collaborators expressly for what they could contribute to an integrated whole. Bruce Mau, a renowned designer and frequent collaborator with architect Frank Gehry, told me, "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."

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