The Opposable Mind

I strongly recommend reading Hilary's recent article on artistry (HilaryAustenJohnson, "Artistry for the Strategist," Journal of Business Strategy [volume 28, issue 4, 2007: 13-21]).

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.

With integrative thinking, aspirations rise over time.

Through this period, Lafley continued to accumulate experiences that strengthened both ends of the mastery-originality continuum. In

The test ofa first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make there otherwise.

By contrast, Chamberlin, with his explicitly developmental perspective, implies that integrative thinking is a skill and discipline that even those of us who aren't geniuses can develop. In Chamberlin's view, the opposable mind is there waiting to be used-and with use, it develops its capacity for creating solutions that would otherwise not be evid

Fourth and finally, the integrative thinker will always search for creative resolution of tensions, rather than accept unpleasant trade-offs.

Blame the "factory setting" of the contemporary business organization, which is biased toward simplification and specialization.And it's not just business organizations. In every domain, human beings gravitate toward simplification and specialization.

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. And they feel confid