Integrated Thinking and Movement Building

I’m wondering whether movement building requires integrated thinking. In his book, “The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking”, Roger Martin argues that successful leaders try not to make “either-or” decisions. They practice integrative thinking, which is defined as:

The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new ideas that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each.

Integrative thinking looks for factors not immediately obvious, considers nonlinear relationships among the apparently opposable ideas, and tries to see the whole problem as a whole. Thru integrative thinking, the leader resolves the tensions among opposable ideas and generates innovative outcomes.

On the other hand, conventional thinking defaults to examining the pros and cons of the presumed alternatives, then eliminating all but one. It breaks the “opposable ideas” into pieces and works on them separately—only focusing on obviously relevant features. It leads to settling for the best available options.

I brainstormed some of the apparently “opposable ideas” in building spiritual movements to which we ought to apply more integrative thinking and not default to “either-or” choices.  Try holding both ideas from each pair in the mind for awhile. Don’t default quickly to alternatives, but imagine or generate new ideas that contain elements of both.

Evangelism — Social Action

Evangelism — Discipleship

Cause — Community

Individual — Team

Truth — Grace

Leaders —- Marginalized (poor, widow, orphan)

Justice —- Justification

Free Will — Sovereignty

Ministry — Movements

Local — Global

Simple — Complex

Intuitive — Structured