The Opposable Mind

Second, integrative thinkers don't flinch from considering multidirectional and nonlinear causal relationships.

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.

One factory preset of the human mind is a tendency to assume that our models of reality are identical to reality itself.

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

Embracing the Mess

Spontaneity, experimentation, flexibility, and openness aren't terribly rare qualities in and of themselves. But it's the mark of an integrative thinker to nurture those markers of originality while at the same time deepening mastery, whose markers-organization, planning, focus, and repetition-are originality's seeming opposite. From his first days

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.

They have the predisposition and the capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. And then, 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. Integrative thinking is my term for this processor more precisely this discipline of con

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]).