Integrative Thinking
Chapter 3 - Experiential Growth Method®
Previous page: Dialectic Thinking - Integrative Thinking - Next page: Paradoxical Thinking
Back to Book content or directly to Main Page or EGM
.
Welcome to the Integrative Thinking page
.
Thinking about the concept
A visual thesaurus search is always an excellent starting point to discuss a concept definition:
| INTEGRATION |
|---|
| https://www.freethesaurus.com/integration |
| INTEGRATIVE |
|---|
| https://www.freethesaurus.com/integrative |
.
Description
In 2007, Roger L. Martin (former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto) wrote an article in HBR: How Successful Leaders Think.
| Books like Jack: Straight from the Gut and Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done are compelling in part because they implicitly promise that we can achieve the success of a Jack Welch or a Larry Bossidy—if only we learn to emulate his actions. But this focus on what a leader does is misplaced. That’s because moves that work in one context often make little sense in another, even at the same company or within the experience of a single leader. (1) |
Integrative thinking is a habit of thinking that anyone can develop by becoming aware of the concept and actively practicing it.
Integrative thinkers have the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind simultaneously. Instead of choosing between these ideas, they attempt to resolve the tension between them by creating a new, superior idea.
Integrative thinkers approach four phases of decision-making differently than conventional thinkers:
- determining relevance,
- analysing causality,
- devising the decision architecture,
- and arriving at a solution.
At each phase, integrative thinkers embrace complexity and seek new possibilities, while conventional thinkers favour simplicity and often settle for less attractive compromises.
| I don’t claim that this is a new idea. More than 60 years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald saw “the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function” as the sign of a truly intelligent individual. And certainly not every good leader exhibits this capability, nor is it the sole source of success for those who do. But it is clear to me that integrative thinking tremendously improves people’s odds. (1) |
Integrative thinkers are fairly rare. Why is this potentially powerful but generally latent tool used so infrequently and to less than full advantage? Because putting it to work makes us anxious. We crave the certainty of choosing between well-defined alternatives and the closure that comes when a decision has been made. For those reasons, we often don’t know what to do with fundamentally opposing and seemingly incommensurable models.
Our first impulse is usually to determine which of the two models is ‘right’ and, by the process of elimination, which is ‘wrong’. We may even take sides and try to prove that our chosen model is better than the other one. By forcing a choice between the two, we disengage the opposable mind before it can seek a creative resolution. This nearly universal personal trait is writ large in most organisations.
| We often don’t know what to do with fundamentally opposing models. Our first impulse is usually to determine which is “right” and, by the process of elimination, which is “wrong.” (1) |
| Content source | |
|---|---|
| (1) | How Successful Leaders Think - Roger L. Martin - HBR - 2007 |
.