BOOK CLUB

THE OPPOSABLE MIND

Last year, the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management sent Mark Norris a copy of Dean Roger Martin’s book The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking. Here’s the verdict from Profile’s CEO.

I was very sorry to miss the launch of Roger Martin’s The Opposable Mind which took place at London’s Sheraton Park Lane Hotel last spring. So I was delighted when Ariana Bradford, the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management’s Director of Global Outreach, sent through a complimentary copy to Profile. Having dipped into it several times since, I do feel that the book is essential reading for industry leaders who need to ‘think outside the box’ during these turbulent times.

Martin conducted extensive research and spoke to a number of highly successful leaders across industry including A.G Lafley of Proctor & Gamble, Michael Dell of Dell and Jack Welch of GE to find out how they think and make difficult decisions. Many of his interviews were conducted in front of an audience of students and alumni at Rotman.

What he found was that truly visionary leaders avoid making decisions on a simplistic, either/or basis. They are integrative thinkers, meaning they can use their minds to hold two seemingly conflicting models or options in their mind, and instead of thinking they have to choose one or the other, they can use the ‘tension’ between those two models to create a third model or option that is better than either of the two, while still holding elements of the two. According to Martin, ‘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’.

One inspiring case study belongs to the hospitality industry: Isadore Sharp, the founder of Four Seasons who started it all in 1960 by opening The Four Seasons Motor Hotel in downtown Toronto. As Martin tells it, at the time, aspiring hoteliers only had two options. The first option was to have a small, friendly motel with fewer than two hundred rooms with basic amenities like a television set in the room, and a lobby restaurant and bar. The second option was to have a large downtown hotel with more amenities, but less intimacy.

Sharp eventually opened his own large, sixteen-hundred room downtown convention hotel with extensive amenities. His dilemma now was to maximise the revenues a large hotel generated, while offering a more personalised guest experience that made business travellers feel at home. After extensive research, Four Seasons became the first hotel company to offer amenities such shampoo in the shower, a two-line phone in every guest-room and big, well-lit desks. Sharp also rejected the one-size-fits all concept, so that each Four Seasons reflected the local culture and context of its location. Sharp told Martin that he wanted to ‘combine the best of the small hotel with the best of the large hotel.’ Eventually, he also pioneered the concept of separating hotel ownership from its management, making Four Seasons the first big hotel company to manage rather than own the hotel facilities that carried its brand. Through his integrative thinking, Sharp was able to achieve his goal to ‘create a reputation for service so clear in people’s minds that Four Seasons’ name will become an asset of far greater value than bricks and mortar’. Integrative thinking gave birth to a luxury brand!

In The Opposable Mind, Martin – who is also a columnist for Business Week On Line – takes us through the steps to develop a more integrative – i.e. creative and holistic -- way of thinking. The time to start? Yesterday!

The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (Harvard Business School Press), is available to buy at Amazon.com