Knowledge Center: Creating Great Choices: A Leader's Guide To Integrative Thinking By Jennifer Riel & Roger L. Martin (Summary)

Creating Great Choices: A Leader's Guide To Integrative Thinking By Jennifer Riel & Roger L. Martin
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Key Concepts

Integrative thinking is a deliberate, conscious means of developing great choices and creative solutions to challenging problems. There are four steps to the integrative thinking process:

Articulate the models. Define your problem and identify two extreme, opposing solutions that can solve it. Explore how each solution would work, how each solution would provide critical benefits, and why the outcomes of each solution are important.
Examine the models. Compare the benefits, assumptions, underlying relationships, and generated value of each model to improve your understanding of how it works, the circumstances in which it would fail, and how others might understand it.
Explore the possibilities. Engage in integrative thinking to create new possibilities that offer more value than either original alternative could create alone.
Assess the prototypes. Once you have identified several new, potentially superior options, test your prototypes to determine how well each choice would work in practice. This assessment can build confidence and enthusiasm for moving forward with the option that is selected.

Introduction

Many of our most challenging situations require us to choose between two imperfect solutions. Often, our choices are limiting, and we feel as though we must accept trade-offs to arrive at a resolution. In Creating Great Choices, Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel suggest another approach: We can arrive at truly superior outcomes by engaging in integrative thinking that results in a “third and better” choice. This approach to decision making can help us as leaders, managers, and workers to make important, impactful choices while avoiding unacceptable trade-offs and maximizing the benefits of their outcomes in virtually any context.

Part One: In Theory … Integrative Thinking 2.0

When we are faced with difficult decisions, we tend to analyze the options that are before us, settle, and make trade-offs after weighing the pros and cons of our options. We choose options based on majority opinions and wind up with solutions that solve only parts of our problems. These approaches typically lead to unsatisfying outcomes, and yet we seldom take the time to create choices that will solve our problems in new and successful ways.

How We Choose

People tend to have flawed processes for decision-making. These processes fail, in part, because of glitches in our thinking that come from deeply set biases and lapses in our logic, but they also fail because we rely on mental models to help us to make sense of our experiences, even though these models are often incomplete or wholly incorrect. Our mental models can fail us for five reasons:

They are implicit and rarely explicitly questioned.
External forces easily manipulate them.
They reflect strongly held beliefs that are difficult to shift in any significant or long-lasting way.
They are simplistic and short circuit our reasoning processes.
They are too narrow and singularly focused on finding the one right answer to a problem.

Because of these deficiencies in our mental models, as well as the potential for conflict when faced with opposing models, trade-offs, and interpersonal conflict in-group decision making, we tend to make suboptimal compromises that rarely result in great choices, but there is a better way. We can make better decisions by implementing a process that allows us to understand our implicit mental models, biases, and failed decision-making patterns while providing us with new tools that allow for metacognition, empathy, and creativity.

A New Way to Think

Metacognition, empathy, and creativity are three elements that are missing from many of our decision-making processes. Metacognition is the process of “thinking about thinking,” or more specifically, how we understand our existing mental models and their limitations. Empathy provides us with a deeper understanding of how others think, which can reveal gaps in our thinking and identify opportunities for collaboration. Finally, creativity helps us to build new, improved solutions as an alternative to choosing between existing options.

Integrative thinking is an approach to decision making that seeks to incorporate these three important components. It provides an alternative to other processes that minimize our thought processes, play up our biases, divide individuals, and reduce our creativity, and instead provides a deliberate, conscious route toward the development of creative solutions.

Part 2: In Practice … A Methodology

The integrative thinking process can help solve challenging problems and create great new choices through four steps:

Articulate the models. Begin the process by framing your problem and defining two extreme, opposing models that will solve it.
Examine the models. After expanding upon your two opposing solutions, study each model and ask a series of questions that will help you to identify the similarities and differences between the models, the aspects of the models you value most, the underlying assumptions of the models, and the cause-and-effect relationships that are at work.
Explore the possibilities. Find ways to integrate the models into a single, superior option that has the potential to create more value than either model could create alone. This may be achieved by combining the best benefits of each option, intensifying one option so that it brings forth the one key benefit of the opposing solution, or finding ways to apply both solutions to distinct parts of the problem.
Assess the prototypes. Define your options, determine how they might work, understand the underlying logic of the solutions, and test each solution to determine which possibility is superior to the others.

Articulating Opposing Models

In the first phase of the integrative thinking process, you must take four critical steps:

Define your problem. Articulate a problem that is worth solving and is meaningful to the people who are tasked with solving it. The problem should be framed in a way that provides integrative thinking teams with a shared understanding of the issue and a shared commitment to resolving it.
Identify two extreme, opposing solutions to the problem. Strive to translate your problem into a two-sided choice to create a controlled amount of tension that can help integrative thinking teams consider each opposing view and its underlying assumptions.
Develop the details of the two opposing ideas. Describe each choice with enough detail for others to understand what it would look like in practice and how the ideas differ from one another.
Describe how each model would work. Build on your understanding of the two models by focusing exclusively on their benefits. This positive focus is essential because it fosters open-mindedness, enhances group productivity, and enables you to see what we can take from each model to create a great new choice.

Examining The Models

After creating and defining two opposing models, you can better understand the attractiveness of each option and what you would be giving up by choosing one option over the other. You can begin to create great new choices that are superior to either of your opposing models by looking at the two models in tension and asking a series of probing questions that will help you to:

Understand the similarities and differences between the models.
Identify which aspects of the models you value most.
Explore the underlying assumptions of the models.
Study the cause-and-effect relationships that are at work in the models.

Generating Possibilities

After defining and examining the models, find ways to integrate them into a single, superior option. This can be accomplished by applying one of the following techniques for resolving tension:

The hidden gem approach. Select a deeply valued benefit from each opposing model and incorporate the chosen benefits into your new solution.
The double-down approach. Bet on your preferred model and extend or intensify it so that it produces an important benefit from the other opposing model.
The decomposition approach. Dissect your problem in a new way so that each model could be wholly applied to different parts of the problem.

While these pathways are not the only proven approaches to creative thinking and the resolution of tension, they are effective in helping you to develop a broad set of potential solutions. Further, they offer a starting point, a means for framing team discussions, and an approach for igniting the creative thinking that is required for any integrative challenge.

Assessing The Prototypes

Once you have generated several new possibilities, test your prototypes and determine which of the possibilities are superior to the others. There are three steps to this process:

Thoroughly define each option and how it might work. You must determine what is at the core of each idea, how it integrates the two opposing models, how the newly created possibility is better than either of the opposing models alone, and how you can capture and communicate the proposed solution effectively.
Understand the logic that underlies each possibility and how each possibility could translate into a winning integrative solution. You can determine the logic of your possibilities by defining them and understanding the conditions in which each of those possibilities could be a great solution to your problem. This step helps you to clarify your thinking and make the models concrete and understandable for others.
Test each possibility. In testing each possibility, you may create simple prototypes or launch full-scale pilot projects. It is critical that these tests focus on the falsification of your core ideas and identify circumstances in which the possibility may fail, instead of trying to prove that a model will succeed.

A Way Of Being In The World

A final element that is crucial to the integrative thinking process is your stance on how you see the world around you and how you see yourself in that world. Your stance signifies your holistic view of who you are and what you are trying to achieve. It is unique to you and directly influences your actions and outcomes.

When it comes to stance, there is no single “right” way to be. However, people who have found success through the integrative thinking approach tend to view integrative thinking as a process and a way of being. They rely on their experiences with integrative thinking to create great choices and develop new solutions to problems. For this approach to become your way of being, you must believe three things:

The world is complex, and we attempt to understand it through simplified models that tend to be incorrect.
Others understand the world differently, and these divergent views provide us with an opportunity to improve our models.
The world is full of opportunities that allow us to improve our models over time, provided that we are open to new answers.

If you embrace these concepts, you can develop a new sense of clarity about your own thinking and better understand your model of the world. You can also be more effective when learning about and leveraging opposing views of the world as you search for answers that resolve your tensions between your opposing ideas.

About The Authors

Jennifer Riel is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, where she teachers integrative thinking and innovation to undergraduate, MBA, and executive audiences. In this capacity, Riel has created and led custom workshops for organizations around the world. She is also a strategy and innovation adviser to senior leaders at several Fortune 500 companies. Riel has served as an editor and collaborator on a number of books, including The Opposable Mind, The Design of Business, and Playing to Win. She has also written for the Globe and Mail, Businessweek, Strategy, the Huffington Post, and Fortune.com. She received her MBA from the Rotman School of Management in 2006.

Roger Martin is an acclaimed author, consultant, and professor. He is director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto (where he also served as dean from 1998 to 2013). Prior to Rotman, he spent 13 years as a director of Monitor Company, a global strategy-consulting firm, serving as co-head of the firm for two years. Martin is an adviser to CEOs on strategy, design, and integrative thinking. He has written widely on these subjects and has published 11 books, including The Opposable Mind, The Design of Business, Fixing the Game, Playing to Win (with A.G. Lafley), and Getting Beyond Better (with Sally Osberg). This year, he was named the most influential management thinker in the world by the Thinkers50, a biennial ranking of global business thinkers. Martin received his AB from Harvard College, with a concentration in economics, and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Amazon.com Review

"…a refreshing and novel twist on the underlying cognitive processes of great decision-making…sound and wonderfully articulated." -- CHOICE, the publication of the American Library Association

"useful management guide to decision making" -- Engineering and Technology Magazine, The Institution of Engineering and Technology

"The Opposable Mind introduced the idea of 'integrative thinking'…[In Creating Great Choices], Riel and Martin turn this insight into a method that they say everyone can learn and practise. In the process they interweave the latest in behavioural and design thinking with new examples from Lego to Unilever." -- Financial Times

"If you're trying to plan an organization's future, this book contains multitudes. Two talented strategists offer vivid stories to unlock your creativity, strong evidence to challenge your assumptions, and practical exercises to sharpen your thinking." -- Adam Grant, LinkedIn

"Roger Martin has been recognized in our annual business book awards more than any other author… Perhaps the only thing more impressive than the consistently high quality of that prolific output is range." -- 800 CEO READ, Editor's Choice

"Making good choices is central to business and personal success...This new book … focuses on the process of learning and practice, the methodology, and the tools and skills leaders need to cultivate integrative thinking." -- IEDP Developing Leaders

"A decade on from The Opposable Mind, Martin sets out a practical workbook on the subject… If you take one thing away it is that to make great choices you need must be prepared to take problems apart before building fully creative solutions." -- Economia

A 2017 Best Business Book -- The Globe & Mail

Advance Praise for Creating Great Choices:

Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author, The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers; staff writer, The New Yorker--
"Creating Great Choices is the rarest of business books that teaches decision makers how to think, not what to think. I found it superb and wholly original."

Adam Grant, New York Times–bestselling author, Give and Take and Originals; coauthor, Option B--
"This book contains multitudes. Two talented strategists offer vivid stories to unlock your creativity, strong evidence to challenge your assumptions, and practical exercises to sharpen your thinking. I’ll be recommending it to leaders, students, and anyone else who wants to get better at problem solving."

David Taylor, Chairman and CEO, Procter & Gamble--
"Integrative thinking is powerful. It provides a concrete way to leverage diverse voices and to collaboratively create better choices. I have worked hard to become a practitioner of this approach of finding the better third way, because I truly believe it leads to more effective and more creative choices. Creating Great Choices provides an essential resource for thinking differently that can help leaders resolve some of their toughest problems."

Arianna Huffington, author, Thrive; CEO, Thrive Global; and founder, Huffington Post--
"Everybody wants to succeed in their jobs and in their relationships and make the world a better place if they can. Creating Great Choices is a book that can actually help you make that happen, offering concrete, practical advice and tools to help you overcome challenges and manage your relationships. It’s an essential read that won't just change how you think, it will also change how you act."

Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO; author, Change by Design--
"Integrative thinking is a critical skill for business and life. The Opposable Mind introduced the idea. With practical and inspirational approaches, Creating Great Choices sets you on the path to mastery."

Daniel H. Pink, author, Drive and To Sell Is Human--
"Integrative thinking is a powerful idea that offers new answers to our toughest problems. In this compelling work, Riel and Martin show us how to use this fresh mental model to make great choices rather than settle for weak compromises. Bursting with practical tips, engaging exercises, and keen insights, this book belongs within arm's reach of every leader trying to navigate the future."

Lowell C. McAdam, Chairman and CEO, Verizon Communications--
"In an age where society is tending more and more to lock in on one line of thinking, Riel and Martin give us the tools to break away from our prejudices and eliminate our blind spots, giving us the chance to arrive at a different and better conclusion. A critical tool in both business and life."

About the Author … Jennifer Riel is an adjunct professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a strategic adviser to senior leaders at a number of Fortune 500 companies. She is coauthor, with Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley, of the Playing to Win Strategy Toolkit (Harvard Business Review Press).

Roger Martin is an author, business school professor, and strategy adviser to CEOs. He is Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, where he served as Dean from 1998 to 2013. He is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and other leading publications and has published nine books, including Playing to Win and The Opposable Mind.

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