In an article “How Successful Leaders Think” published in the June issue of the Harvard Business Review, Roger Martin argues that it is difficult to reproduce the successes of eminent business leaders such as Jack Welsch or Larry Bossidy just by reproducing their actions, strategies, or best practices – because “moves that work well in one context often make little sense in another, even at the same company or within the experience of a single leader.” Martin argues that rather than learning from what leaders have done, a more productive starting point is to learn from how leaders think.
After interviewing 50 leaders, Martin formed the view that:
. . . leaders . . . share an unusual trait: they have the predisposition and the capacity to hold in their heads two ideas at once. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one or the other, they’re able to creatively resolve the tension between the two ideas by generating a new one that contains elements of the others but is superior to both.
Martin claims that “it is this discipline – not superior strategy or faultless execution – that is the defining characteristic of the most exceptional businesses and the people who run them.”
Martin argues that both conventional thinking and “integrative thinking” follow the same sequence:
- Determining Salience
- Analyzing Causality
- Envisioning the Decision Architecture
- Achieving Resolution
However, the dynamics in each stage are quite different. For example, Martin suggests that in determining salience, conventional thinking abstracts the most relevant information from a situation; in integrative thinking more perspectives and less obvious factors may be identified for consideration. In envisioning the solution architecture; conventional thinking might suggest a reductionistic approach; integrative thinking tends to suggest a more holistic approach. Martin develops this framework more extensively in his article.
Martin notes that his insights are not new: for example, he cites F. Scott Fitzgerald’s aphorism to the effect that “the sign of a truly intelligent individual is the ability to hold two completely opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
However, Martin does not explore and discuss the myriad frameworks that may be related to his model. For example, the Creative Problem Solving framework I mentioned in the previous article on De Bono involves cultivating divergent thinking to establish a wider framework and perspective, followed by convergent thinking to select from and develop the relevant ideas and information – all in a model similar to the framework Martin proposes. In the divergent thinking phase, maintaining multiple conflicting ideas in parallel is healthy – but at some point a selection or integration needs to take place.