If you want to be as successful as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, or Michael Dell, read their autobiographical advice books, right? Wrong, says Roger Martin in "The Opposable Mind." Though following "best practice" can help in some ways, it also poses a danger: By emulating what a great leader did in a particular situation, you'll likely be terribly disappointed with your own results. Why? Your situation is different. Instead of focusing on what exceptional leaders do, we need to understand and emulate how they think. Successful businesspeople engage in what Martin calls integrative thinking--creatively resolving the tension in opposing models by forming entirely new and superior ones. Drawing on stories of leaders as diverse as AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health, and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Martin shows how integrative thinkers are relentlessly diagnosing and synthesizing by asking probing questions--including "What are the causal relationships at work here?" and "What are the implied trade-offs?" Martin also presents a model for strengthening your integrative thinking skills by drawing on different kinds of knowledge--including conceptual and experiential knowledge. Integrative thinking can be learned, and "The Opposable Mind" helps you master this vital skill.

I am a strategy consultant and business professor - and a Dean for 15 years. My passion is exploring mysteries related to the ways we think about or model our world. I've looked, for example, for common patterns in the way successful leaders tackle difficult 'either/or' dilemmas. I've explored how it is that corporations drive out innovation - even as they desperately seek it. I've examined the way in which theories that are meant to help corporations achieve financial goals and make shareholders rich actually produce the opposite. Most recently, I have explored how we conceptualize strategy influence the way we do or do not create useful ways to guide an organization's actions. In each of my books, I attempt to understand a particular way in which our thinking can get in our own way, and provide specific advice for addressing that challenge.

Check out my books to the left and visit my website (www.rogerlmartin.com) if you want to see more of my writing.