The concept of integrative thinking can be boiled down into one phrase - “what should I think?” Roger Martin, The Opposable Mind; How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA:2007), argues for a different way of thinking – one in which uses the best of all minds and formulates a new model or way of thinking. It is a brain that can see different perspectives and value in each. Integrative thinking is a neither-nor concept. It is taking the best of both arguments and combining them to create a new order, or way of knowing. Good leaders don't take sides, but understand that there are elements to many different ways of looking at something and take what works.
This term has been a struggle of focus – or so I thought. Reading The Opposable Mind I realized it wasn't focus and much as needed synthesis, a connect-the-dots if you will. I have a highly creative and oft scattered mind. And in this very deductive world we live in, I have viewed it as handicap – something to overcome, not embrace. But even with this definable concept, temperance and discipline in order to synthesize. A good leader should see both sides; but she needs to discover the validity and merit of points within the argument.
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