March 25, 2008
Escaping the “either/or” trap: audio interview
Why has AG Lafley been so successful at running Procter & Gamble? According to Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Mr Lafley is a great example of the superior leader who doesn’t reduce management to a series of “either/or” choices. Instead, he has been able to blend two seemingly incompatible courses of action into a very effective strategy.
In his recent book, The Opposable Mind, Prof Martin tells how P&G was being pushed in two different directions when Mr Lafley became chief executive in the dark days of 2000. On the one hand, the maker of Tide detergent and Crest toothpaste faced pressure to cut costs in order to compete more aggressively with own-brand goods. Yet there was an opposing school of thought that said the path to salvation lay in going upmarket by using expensive innovations to differentiate P&G brands from the me-too products.
As Prof Martin tells it - and as an advisor to Mr Lafley he has had a privileged view of the turnround - part of the genius of the P&G boss was in finding a way to reconcile these two positions into a synthesised whole that managed to satisfy both constituencies. Costs were cut but there was also a new emphasis on design and on importing external ideas that helped P&G to charge higher prices. Prof Martin calls this have-cake-and-eat-it approach ”integrative thinking”.
In this 9-minute audio interview, I chat to Prof Martin to find out how managers can structure their own problem-solving in order to avoid simplistic binary oppositions.
He explains how managers must avoid unconsciously filtering out information that clashes with their own pet model. He praises Issy Sharp, founder of the Four Seasons hotel chain, as another ‘integrative thinker’, while also giving his analysis of how the credit crunch is affecting executive decision-making.
As a postscript, I can’t help but notice something intriguing about Prof Martin. He sits on the board of Thomson, the Canadian group that is waiting for the formal consummation of its takeover of Reuters, the British financial data provider. Reuters shareholders formally vote on the offer tomorrow. Assuming they agree to the deal, Prof Martin will sit on the board of Thomson-Reuters alongside Niall FitzGerald, the chairman of Reuters and a former boss of Unilever, P&G’s great rival. Mr Lafley’s canny leadership made life at Unilever far from easy for Mr FitzGerald. I hope there are no hard feelings.
PPS: those interested in the P&G renaissance should also find this analysis by my colleague Neil Buckley interesting.
Prof. Roger Martin represents a new generation of “Q-Thinkers,” where Q means quantum. I have had a number of discussions with Prof. Martin during our meetings at the Rotman School of Management, Economic Club of Toronto, Empire Club of Canada, Canadian Club of Toronto, and would like to say that, in fact, Prof. Martin brings us some ideas from quantum physics to describe the state of mind of most successful influential executives using the concept of “integrative thinking.” The meta-stable opposable states generated during the process of thinking (as it is described in The Opposable Mind) is the most effective approach to find the optimal business solution during the problem solving brainstorm meetings at the Board of Directors level.
Posted by: Viktor O. Ledenyov | March 26th, 2008 at 5:29 pm | Report this commentThe biggest mistakes I ever made were when I thought I knew what I was doing. So many times I see clients who are convinced of their own expertise go marching down the wrong road — and I ahve done the same a cople of times, too.
Roger Martin reminds us of the value of consultation to avoid liitng our choices.
Posted by: Jonathan Mueller | March 28th, 2008 at 1:57 pm | Report this commentProf. Roger Martin’s efforts to create the best financial lab, empowered by the tens of double monitor computers and by the Bloomberg terminal, at Rotman School of Management is one of the examples of practical realization of “integrative thinking” in education process. Roger’s idea to use the concept of superposition, which is the combination of all the possible states of mind, during the thinking and analysis towards the creation of new business models, new business strategies execution in the process of corporate transformation in high volatility capital markets is genius. I am confident that a big number of European CEOs, Directors and Board members will find the time to read all the advices provided in The Opposable Mind, and explore the new world of business opportunities during the period of transition to upcoming q-business models from current e-business models. I strongly recommend this brilliant book to senior executives from European corporations.
Posted by: Viktor O. Ledenyov | March 28th, 2008 at 3:51 pm | Report this commentThe ability to reconcile multiple perspectives and priorities is essential, particularly in matrix organizations, whose very existence demonstrates that it is not possible to make linear choices (or you would not need a matrix)
When I work with clients to clarify what they can but also to get comfortable with more ambiguity, they get it intellectually but immediately tend to focus on the clarity rather than the uncomfortable ambiguity - human nature I guess
Posted by: Kevan Hall | March 31st, 2008 at 5:10 pm | Report this commentThe Opposable Mind is a very interesting, pleasant, and well-written book, which deserves to be called The Bible of Management and considered as a comprehensive source of information on the integrative adaptive collateral thinking. Every President, Chairman, CEO and Board of Directors Member has to keep it on his/her office desk at corporations in Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. During our numerous thoughtful discussions on a variety of business topics at Fairmont Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto in 2005-2006, Roger told me about his modest idea to write a little book on his life-long study of integrative thinking to encourage the MBA and EMBA students to think creatively at Rotman School of Management in Canada. The result of Prof. Roger Martin’s research work has surpassed all the readers expectations. The Opposable Mind is a collection of treasures to be discovered by every profound reader at any age. The Opposable Mind is a dramatic tale of the story on the role of integrative thinking during the decision making processes in business, science and politics, which has been presented with a simple understandable for every reader language. In the century of information processing with the speed of light with the application of quantum device technologies, when the network centric operation is essential for overall success of small, medium and large businesses, the access to the detailed analysis on integrative thinking is vital. Thank you, Roger, for the masterpiece of human intellect!
Posted by: Viktor O. Ledenyov | April 4th, 2008 at 3:23 pm | Report this commentTaking a decision in the large organization is becoming very critical factor sometimes for the business leader as this decision always faces some confrontation from some other angle. In this context the book “The Opposable Mind” has a great value for the young leaders like us as this book is capable of teaching a great lesson to the young leader to cope up with the challenges raised at the time of taking critical decision at the workplace and also helping them to extract the positive ideas from the challenges
Posted by: Ricky Hall | April 26th, 2008 at 10:32 am | Report this comment