The Opposable Mind

by Roger L. Martin

  Such meditations produce solutions that, in the words of Bruce Mau of Bruce Mau Design, “revolve around the plural.”7 At the core of every integrative thinker’s stance is a predisposition to look at models together, not separately, in search for useful answers. Such thinking is the very embodiment of Thomas C. Chamberlin’s idea of multiple working hypotheses.

  Cultivating Stance

  As we proceed to the work of cultivating a stance, remember that stance is not, as it were, freestanding. It exists only in the context of tools and experiences, which require time to accumulate. So neither I nor anyone else can teach you the stance of an integrative thinker. Such a stance is a cumulative continuous process that begins with the individual temperament (think here of Michael Lee-Chin’s bedrock belief that the world was susceptible to his efforts to change it). Tools and experiences reinforce the stance entailed by temperament, and they add depth and nuance.

  The question, then, is what initial features of stance can serve as the foundation of a personal knowledge system that we then build into the robust stance of an integrative thinker like Victoria Hale?

  The foundations are the six elements of stance that I introduced earlier in this chapter. We’re about to discuss them at some length, so let’s review them now:

  STANCE ABOUT THE WORLD

  Existing models do not represent reality; they are our constructions.

  Opposing models are to be leveraged, not feared.

  Existing models are not perfect; better models exist that are not yet seen. STANCE ABOUT SELF

  I am capable of finding a better model.

  I can wade into and get through the necessary complexity.

  I give myself the time to create a better model.

  As you look over the entries on this list, remember that each is only a start. They have to be reinforced with tools and experiences to become robust. As your integrative thinking stance takes root and develops flexibility and strength, you’ll also discover that each element in the stance about the self has a counterpart in the stance about the world. As you come to understand that existing models do not represent reality, you’ll also begin to believe you are capable of finding a better model. As you learn to see that opposing models exist to be leveraged, you’ll grow more comfortable wading into the resulting complexity, confident that you’ll come out the other side with deeper understanding. And as your conviction grows that better models exist that are not yet seen, you’ll find yourself more willing to take the time you need to fashion a creative resolution.

  So if stance itself cannot be taught, its elements can. Let’s see how, beginning with the first one.

  1. Existing Models Do Not Represent Reality

  As discussed in chapter 3, we come to the world with a “factory setting” that causes us to confuse our perceptions, which are subjective constructions, with objective reality. The confusion is reinforced every time we hear someone say, “The reality is . . .” It’s further reinforced by our education, which drills us to recall facts on demand, even when those facts are actually interpretations, whether of a Shakespeare play or the Battle of Waterloo or Karl Marx’s theory of surplus capital. This isn’t the result of a grand conspiracy to plant in our minds a permanent confusion between constructions and reality. It’s just the nature of factory settings to seek to perpetuate themselves, and this particular setting has found a way to flourish in our educational system.

  The first step toward a consciously cultivated stance is to learn to distinguish between subjective constructions and objective reality. The movie Crash, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2005 (as well as two other Oscars), vividly shows how that distinction can be, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

  The plot of Crash weaves together several vignettes of super-charged racial tension in Los Angeles. One crucial strand of the plot is the escalating confrontation between Daniel, a Hispanic locksmith, and Farhad, an Iranian shopkeeper. Farhad is a relatively recent immigrant who speaks heavily accented and rudimentary English and runs a modest shop in a poor neighborhood of Los Angeles. Thieves have broken into the shop or held him up several times, and he eventually decides to buy a gun for protection, against the entreaties of his highly assimilated daughter, Dorri, who is pursuing a medical degree. Farhad’s English isn’t good enough to manage the transaction with the gun shop owner, and so despite her misgivings, Dorri helps her father buy the gun.

  When we see Farhad again, he’s on the phone to his insurance company, complaining that his shop isn’t secure because the back door lock is broken. The insurance company sends Daniel, an independent contractor who works as a twenty-four-hour on-call locksmith. Daniel, a twenty-something Latino, is, well, a little scary-looking, especially to a cultural outsider like Farhad. Daniel’s head is shaved bald, he wears an earring and has several prominent tattoos, and he dresses like a member of one of the local gangs that plague Farhad’s impoverished neighborhood.

  But in a few economical scenes, we glimpse another side of Daniel: a gentle family man who treasures his wife and young daughter. The family lives in a modest but immaculate house—he takes his shoes off before he enters. We see the pride his five-year-old daughter takes in her school uniform, and we gather that Daniel and his wife have made deep sacrifices to send their girl to a private school.

  The first lesson dramatists learn is that every scene contains some form of conflict. The crucial scene between Daniel and Farhad is all conflict, a clash between two subjective constructions of reality so completely at odds with each other, as well as with objective reality, that a tragic denouement is all but inevitable.

  The scene opens in Farhad’s shop. Daniel is in back, working on the faulty lock. He turns away from his labors and approaches Farhad, who is sitting at the cash register listening to Iranian music, his mind seemingly far away.

  “Excuse me,” Daniel says. “Excuse me, sir.” Farhad is plainly irritated to be distracted from his reverie. “You finished?” he asks brusquely.

  “I replaced the lock,” Daniel says, “but you got a real problem with that door.”

  “You fixed the lock?” Farhad inquires impatiently.

  “Nah, I replaced the lock,” Daniel says. “But you gotta fix that door.”

  “Just fix the lock,” Farhad snaps.

  “Sir, listen to me,” Daniel says, his patience fraying at the edges. “What you need is a new door.”

  “I need new door?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. How much?”

  “I don’t,” Daniel begins, then shakes his head. “Sir, you’re gonna have to call somebody that sells doors.”

  “You try to cheat me, right?” Farhad asks aggressively. “You have a friend that fix door?”

  “Nah, I don’t have a friend that fixes doors, bro,” Daniel says. He’s offended, and angry.

  “Then go and fix the #$&*@ lock, you cheater!”

  “Y-y-y-you know what?” Daniel says. He’s nearing his breaking point. “Why don’t you just pay for the lock and I won’t charge you for the time?” He hands Farhad a copy of the work order.

  “You don’t fix the lock,” Farhad says, slamming the paperwork down on the counter, “I pay? What? You think I am stupid? You fix the #$&*@ lock, you cheater.”

  “Now, I’d appreciate it if you stop calling me names,” Daniel says, controlling himself with effort.

  “Then fix the #$&*@ lock!” Farhad demands.

  “I replaced the lock! You gotta fix the #$&*@ door!”

  “You cheat! You #$&*@ cheater!”

  “Fine,” Daniels says, crumpling the work order. “Don’t pay.”

  “What?” Farhad says, staring in disbelief as Daniel throws the balled-up paper in the trash.

  “Have a good night,” Daniel says sarcastically and turns to walk toward the door.

  “What?” Farhad says, furious. “No, wait. Wait. You come back here. You fix the lock. Come here you, fix my lock.”

  But Daniel is already o
ut the door.

  The next morning, Farhad goes to open his store, only to find that it’s been broken into and trashed. To add racist insult to Farhad’s injury, the vandals have spray-painted anti-Arab graffiti all over the walls, with vengeful references to the 9/11 attacks. This doubles Farhad’s fury—he’s Persian and regards being called Arab as a grave insult. He is devastated.

  Farhad’s outrage is complete when the insurance adjuster informs him that the insurer won’t cover the damage. Farhad was negligent, the adjuster explains, in not taking Daniel’s advice to have the door fixed.

  As he broods on this injustice, Farhad becomes convinced that Daniel was responsible for the break-in. Using the address he finds on the crumpled work order that Daniel threw in Farhad’s trash can, he goes to Daniel’s house with the gun his daughter helped him buy. In due course, Daniel pulls his locksmith’s van into his driveway. As he steps out of the van, Farhad confronts him, gun in hand. He demands his money back. Daniel doesn’t understand what he is talking about. He tries to placate Farhad, but his efforts only inflame Farhad further.

  From the front window of the house, Daniel’s young daughter watches the confrontation unfold. She rushes out to protect her father, only to step directly into the line of fire just as Farhad shoots at Daniel. Daniel screams in agony, and his wife, who has just raced outside from the kitchen, falls to her knees at the front steps, sobbing.

  The scene, in which an innocent little girl becomes the victim of a wholly preventable misunderstanding, is almost unbearably tragic. But the confrontation between Daniel and Farhad takes a surprising twist, thanks to Dorri, Farhad’s daughter. In a startling scene later in the film, we learn that while helping her father buy the gun and ammunition, she surreptitiously bought blanks. Those were blanks that Farhad fired at the man he wrongly thought had cheated him and violated his property. The lives of Daniel and his daughter are spared, and Farhad is spared a first-degree murder charge.

  This compelling scene speaks directly to the importance of a stance that consciously distinguishes between reality and its many subjective models. Both Daniel and Farhad develop models of each other that they see as coterminous with reality. Their models are so real to them that they are willing to take extreme action on them. Farhad’s actions may be more extreme than Daniel’s, but both men go too far.

  In Farhad’s mind, Daniel is first a cheater, then a full-fledged criminal who either broke in himself or gave the address to his criminal friends to do the dirty work. What data was salient to him? Daniel’s ethnicity, his menacing appearance, and his inability to fix the door. Farhad made causal links among that data to construct a model of Daniel as a cheater who invented a problem with the door to get work for one of his friends. That model shapes his understanding of his confrontation with the cheater. Daniel’s anger, refusal to finish the job, and the subsequent vandalizing of the store are all salient data points that reinforce and amplify his initial construction of Daniel’s character: this dangerous-looking locksmith is a cheater—a criminal cheater.

  As Farhad is constructing his model of Daniel, Daniel is constructing a model of Farhad. Salient to Daniel is the strange music Farhad is listening to, his heavy accent, his awkwardly phrased accusation (“You try to cheat me, right?”). From these points of salience, he builds a model of an ignorant, belligerent, insulting man. He keeps his cool after Farhad accuses him, but the ironic, unfriendly spin he puts on the word “bro” ratchets up the hostilities. Daniel’s language reinforces Farhad’s view of him as some kind of gangster, and he steps up the volume and venom of his verbal attacks. Daniel, in his turn, reads Farhad’s mounting anger as further confirmation of his original view of him as an ignorant hothead. He gives up on getting paid and walks out—confirming Farhad’s view that Daniel can’t be trusted.

  Both Daniel and Farhad confuse their constructions of each other with reality itself, and those constructions determine each man’s course of action. Certain that he was dealing with an ignorant, insulting, and belligerent man, Daniel felt justified in quickly giving up his effort to explain the problem with the door and leaving without helping the customer secure his premises.

  Although Farhad had acted provocatively, Daniel’s reaction wasn’t foreordained. Before quickly cutting off any effort at communication and mutual understanding, he could have asked himself if there was an alternative explanation for Farhad’s behavior. He could have decided that he needed to hang in there longer in order to figure out whether his initial construction of Farhad was right or wrong; he might have tried a different tack. He might have asked Farhad to come over to the door and shown him why the door, and not the lock, was at the root of the problem. Instead, he flung Farhad’s curses back at him and stormed out in a huff, inadvertently giving Farhad another data point for his erroneous, or at least seriously incomplete, construction of Daniel. To Farhad, Daniel was obviously angry enough to return with his lowlife friends and trash his store.

  But if Daniel’s error lay in what he didn’t do, Farhad’s error lay in what he did, which was far more extreme than Daniel’s angry exit. Because Farhad’s constructed model of Daniel led him to believe Daniel was the author of the break-in, Farhad believed he was justified in shooting that cheating criminal. Just like Daniel, Farhad could have asked himself it was possible to put a different construction on Daniel’s conduct. Even the pause to think might have dissuaded him from racing off for revenge, gun in hand.

  The point here, as I tell my students, is that reality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Very little in life should be viewed as incontrovertibly real. We’re usually connected to reality by our model of it. Once, for example, Sir Isaac Newton’s model of the forces governing the universe was commonly taken as reality itself. It was an almost palpable wrench for educated people when Albert Einstein proposed a superior model of physical forces. The forces hadn’t changed, but the systematic description of them had, and it left many people feeling as if the forces themselves had come unstuck.

  If there’s an overriding lesson to take away from the story of Daniel and Farhad, it’s that (1) anything we think is real is actually a model of reality; and (2) that model is probably imperfect in some important respects.

  2. Opposing Models Are to Be Leveraged, Not Feared

  There’s much to be gained from the recognition that no model has a lock on reality, but that all models reflect reality from a particular angle. It becomes possible to assemble a fuller, though probably not complete, model of reality by incorporating a variety of other models. Salient data that was once overlooked, causal patterns that formerly went unnoticed, architectural possibilities that once went unexplored, all begin to emerge.

  Opposing models, in fact, are the richest source of new insight into a problem. We learn nothing from someone who sees the problem exactly as we do. The agreement and reinforcement are gratifying, but that sense of gratification can be deceiving if we both have overlooked something crucial. Farhad and Daniel could have learned a lot from each other, and they hurt themselves by giving up on the effort. The most creative, productive stance is one that sees opposing models as learning opportunities to be appreciated, welcomed, and understood.

  Models, integrative thinkers realize, are bound to clash, just as they do in the story of Sally and Bill, recounted in chapter 3. Some degree of conflict occurs every time two or more people look at a particular slice of reality and try to model it. So there’s no reason to be alarmed when each story has as many competing realities as it has participants and witnesses; there’s no need to go to battle stations as Farhad and Daniel or Sally and Bill do. If anything but your model is wrong, every other model is a problem to be eliminated or ignored. If instead your model is one of many, all of them imperfect, then the existence of a clashing version is to be expected, not feared.

  3. Better Models Exist That Are Not Yet Seen

  The next step in teaching integrative thinking is to cultivate the belief that better models exist that are not yet seen. />
  At the broadest level, there are two conceptual approaches for considering and evaluating theories of how the world works. I call them the “contented model defense” and “optimistic model seeking.” Contented model defense is by far the most prevalent model—it is the factory setting for most people, who are generally unconscious of its operation. When we engage in contented model defense, we adopt a theory and then seek to support and defend it. As we accumulate data in support of the theory we’ve adopted, we become more certain that our theory represents the truth and more content that we have achieved our ultimate goal, certainty.8

  Recall now the scene between Farhad and Daniel. Both engage in contented model defense. Farhad quickly built a model of Daniel—the cheater model—then looked for evidence to confirm the veracity of his model: Daniel called him “bro”; Daniel swore at him; Daniel refused to come back and fix the door; Daniel stormed out in anger. All of these things confirmed in Farhad’s mind that Daniel was a cheater at best and a criminal at worst.

  Simultaneously, Daniel was forming a model of Farhad as ignorant and insulting: Farhad called him a cheater; Farhad swore at him; Farhad yelled at him. All of these things confirmed Daniel’s derogatory model of Farhad.