Constructive Tension

I came across this great concept while reading "The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking" by Roger Martin, Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press, 2007

The crux of the book is that we were born with an opposable mind we can use to hold two conflicting ideas in constructive tension. We can use that tension to think our way through to a new and superior idea.

It's not so much that this is a shockingly new thesis-it sounds rather like the concept of a dialectic that fuelled Marx's work, for example. Instead, it is Martin's framing of this old idea that makes it both novel and relevant today. The notion that there is a unique functionality embedded in the human brain, which allows us to overcome problems and quandaries, as well as synthesize competing options and creative solutions, is powerfully hopeful.

According to Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, many great business leaders have the knack of holding two contradictory ideas in their heads and using the friction and energy from this opposition to fashion, over time, a third and better idea.

I am amazed by the breadth of application that this concept has.The general skill or discipline is applicable to almost any human endeavour. The book has many corporate and a few non-corporate illustrations demonstrating the application of this concept.

Its definatelly worth a read.