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ROT116

STRETCHING
THE MIND:
DEVELOPING AN
ADAPTIVE LENS
TO DEAL WITH
COMPLEXITY

‘Stretching’ the mind to achieve both breadth

and depth is a skill that will be of increasing value
in our complex environment.
by Mihnea Moldoveanu and Roger Martin

AS INDIVIDUALS, WE RELATE TO our complex, uncertain and foggy Integrative thinkers see their way clear to successful action in
world not only through our senses, but also through ways of situations where others see only a choice between poor or mediocre
making sense of what our senses sense. These ‘ways of seeing’ can be outcomes. Theirs is a dialectical mind, or a ‘diamind’ for short – a
thought of as ‘mental models’, and our minds are filled with them, mind that beholds at least two contradictory ways of seeing in any
whether we are aware of it or not. In today’s complex environment, critical situation, gives each its full due, and instead of fearing and
the most successful thinkers can quickly and effectively abstract fleeing the resulting tension, embraces it and comes up with a third
the best qualities of radically different ways of seeing from others and better way that obliterates neither of the original ways of seeing
and apply them to the situation at hand. In doing so, these thinkers but improves upon both. We believe that achieving a diamind is
develop an ‘adaptive lens’ on the bewildering phenomenon we call within the reach of anyone who is willing to think deeply about his
the world. We call these individuals integrative thinkers. or her own thinking and thereby ‘stretch’ their mind.

Rotman Magazine Fall 2010 / 5

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Old Habits Die Hard decide what new beliefs to hold out for testing. They look for con-
Like much of human behaviour, our thinking is habitual, consist- nections of the logical and causal type among facts and quasi-facts,
ing largely of ‘automatisms’ – repetitive units of mental activity rather than just associations and correlations.
that occur on very short time scales. Sadly, most of the mental Aware of this difference, we can ask: in what circumstances
habits we develop to deal with our complex world close oΩ oppor- should logical depth dominate informational breadth, and vice versa?
tunities for further thought and perception, and may or may not be In what situations is more thinking better than more foraging or more
useful, depending on the context you find yourself in. ‘If you see a asking, given that one can only think (or forage) more if one forages
lion, run’ is a useful mental routine when you are alone in the wilds (or thinks) less? Having answered these questions, we can then ask:
of the Savannah, but not at the local zoo. Of course, the trick is to How can we get marketing people and engineering people to think
figure out quickly whether you are in the wild or at the local zoo, together? How can we integrate the thinking patterns of information-
and act accordingly. ally-broad thinkers with those of logically-deep thinkers in order to
The problem is, in the realm of organizations, ‘Savannahs’ and create better thinkers?
‘zoos’ do not come pre-labeled; it is easy to mistake one for the
other, with disastrous consequences. So you have to figure out Expanding Your Mind’s Window
quickly and effectively the ecological value of your own thinking Whether you are a marketer, an engineer or a baker, your mind has a
habits. The question isn’t, ‘Is it better to think more deeply about ‘window’ through which it experiences the world. However, the edges
my problems?’, but, rather, ‘When is it useful to think more deeply?’ of this window are hidden in such a way that you can see through it but
Unlike behavioural habits, mental habits are difficult to spot, cannot – without some training – see the window itself.
name and describe. Partly because they are covert and partly We will try to describe this window by means of a graph
because they sneak up on us in moments of unawareness, they are (see Figure One). On the horizontal axis, plot how much you know
also difficult to eliminate or change. This is why we need a new kind about a given situation: the total number of co-varying entities or
of language for describing patterns of mental behaviour: we need to variables that are salient and that your mind makes use of in real time
learn to speak ‘mentalese’ – a language that will allow us to figure as it thinks. This axis measures the breadth of your mind: how
out quickly and effectively how we and others think. much you can take into account when thinking, without either pan-
The language of artificial intelligence (‘AI’) comes in handy for icking or losing interest – that is, without becoming too anxious or
describing patterns of thought. For years, AI scholars have tried to bored to continue thinking. For example, if you can memorize one
teach machines how to do things, and as a result, they have had to or more phone numbers (including area codes) correctly, your
learn to be very clear in their own thinking and to make useful and mind’s memory can hold within it at least ten independent chunks
important distinctions such as the ‘breadth-depth distinction’. In of information while performing a simple task, such as copying that
the modern workplace, this distinction is very useful. For instance, information onto a keypad as you dial. If you play chess at the mas-
one finds that ‘marketing people’ pay attention to a lot of informa- ters’ level, you can probably hold in your mind at least seven or
tion: they are informationally broad in their thinking patterns; they eight possible ‘scripts’ for each move, each consisting of a sequence
constantly forage the world for new bits of information and com- of three or four forward moves by each of the two players.
pare that information with parts of their existing database – which Now for the window’s height. On the vertical axis, plot the level
they keep around in working memory – in order to arrive at action of di≈culty of the tasks your mind carries out while it thinks – how
prescriptions or decision rules. many operations per unit of knowledge your mind can correctly per-
One could argue, however, that marketing people spend less form in order to arrive at ‘answers.’ This measures the depth of your
time than, say, engineers thinking about each individual piece of mind – the amount of ‘pure thinking’ you can or are willing to do
information and about how the various pieces fit together. In other without panicking or losing interest, given a certain amount of infor-
words, compared to engineers, marketers are logically shallower in mation. For instance, ordering a random list of names according to
their thinking approach. By contrast, one finds that ‘engineering rank or alphabetical order will take you a number of operations that
people’ are informationally narrower but logically deeper in their is roughly proportional to the number of names on the list. By con-
thinking styles: they seek out far less information than their mar- trast, figuring out how to play ‘the perfect’ chess game – the game that
keting counterparts; then, having gathered it, they strive for logical wins against all possible other chess games – will require a very large
consistency amongst the various pieces of information they have number of basic steps to solve – one that grows exponentially with
deemed relevant. For instance, they look for ways in which what the number of possible moves that you can make at any one point in
they believe connects to what they know. They look for the logical time. Even though this problem can be solved in a finite number of
implications of what they already know or believe in order to steps, that finite number is so large that it has yet to be calculated.

6 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2010

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one look wise to talk about ‘unknown unknowns’, but in practical

Stretching the Mind Figure One terms, what good does it do us if they remain unknown? The
assumption on which this question rests, of course, is that they have
to remain unknown and that you can’t think about what you (cur-
D = Depth

rently) don’t think about – which is precisely the kind of pickle that
talk about ‘most people’s’ patterns of reasoning gets us into: we con-
fuse averages with laws of nature, and di≈culty with impossibility.
Next, let’s map different human ways of thinking onto our mind’s
D* window so that they start to look familiar. A logician – a software
designer, theoretical physicist or economist – typically invests in deep-
ening her mind. She truncates the number of variables she
What you can think about
concentrates on and spends more time trying to figure out the con-
nections among them and the logical implications of these
connections. She solves ‘logically deep’ problems: mile-deep, inch-
wide ones, such as, ‘If all traders in a market were rational and
interpreted relevant information in the same way, then what is
What you think about the equilibrium price of a commodity that has just started trading
following an IPO?’
The mile-deep mind cuts through the messy complexities of
human action and much of ‘reality’ – for instance, the reality that
B = Breadth actual traders may well interpret the same information in radically
B* different ways; that some traders are much more savvy than others
(which these others know, so that they ‘follow the leader’ and get into
speculative bubbles); that some of these ‘leaders’ may not trade on
religious holidays, which can cause significant disruptions in the mar-
ket and significant gains for those who are willing to speculate on this
Now, put the two axes together, and let’s mark the hypothetical behaviour by the appropriate methods; that many traders may lack
points where your mind will ‘cave in’ from too much complexity: B* the intelligence to determine the logical consequences of their beliefs
and D*. The quadrangle [0,0], [B*,0], [B*,D*], [0,D*] constitutes and/or the fortitude to act on those beliefs (or on their consequences,
your mind’s window on the world. You ‘see’ only what is inside the win- if they have figured them out.) Needless to say, finance theorists have
dow and cannot see what is outside of it – unless you work at enlarging a field day examining models (again, inch-wide and mile-deep) of
it by making your mind broader or deeper – or ideally, both. ‘herd behaviour,’ ‘rational bubbles,’ ‘irrational bubbles’ and so on. Yet
We are now ready to take in some sobering news, courtesy of they remain anchored in a sparse set of assumptions and look at a nar-
complex systems expert John Holland: most people can only keep row set of variables that are deemed ‘salient’: they all try to explain a
track of – at most – three co-varying variables at the same time. lot by a little – the avowed aim of economic theorists, and perhaps of
This is rather disappointing: if you’re a CEO for a manufacturing the scientific mind more generally.
company whose quarterly profits, market share and advertising and Contrast the mile-deep, inch-wide mind with the mile-wide,
R&D expenses co-vary even in simple ways; and if you vary your inch-deep mind – that of the historian, the journalist, the salesperson
choice of ‘generic’ strategies (‘profit from the core,’ ‘unrelated and the marketer, documenters of the particular and the immedi-
diversification,’ etc.); and if you have to make ‘real-time’ decisions ate. The inch-deep, mile-wide mind is all about describing events
(as you would during a top-management meeting or a meeting with ‘thickly,’ using many facts and different perspectives on the same
three or four key investors whose interests you have to balance) observations, and possibly making use of a lot of evocative allusions
that affect these variables (and perhaps the ways in which they and connotations, rather than explanations and denotations alone.
co-vary); and if you fall into the ‘most people’ category (a good The mile-wide mind does not care about explaining ‘a lot by a little’:
assumption), then you’re up the creek without a paddle: you can it is perfectly happy to explain ‘a lot by a lot’ or even ‘a little by a lot’.
likely only make local judgments that don’t necessarily make sense More often than not, we have been trained to simplify and
when put together, and hope for the best. What saves you, of specialize; but at the same time we are often rewarded as ‘people of
course, is that you don’t ‘know’ you’re making these mental choices action’ in the world of business for being closely connected to ‘the
while you’re making them – they feel like good judgments or com- facts’ – however messy, complicated and contradictory they may be.
mon sense at the time you make them, so you are able to continue This tension is hard to deal with. One often feels like asking, ‘OK,
functioning without panic. do you want me to know a lot or to think a lot?’ – the implication
Well, you might retort, what good is thinking about what I don’t being that there is a one-for-one trade-oΩ between the two. But is
think about if I can’t think about it in the first place? Sure, it makes there? The question is not as rhetorical as it seems. After all, why

Rotman Magazine Fall 2010 / 7

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The typical stance of the diamind is to ‘go wide’

when faced with deep thoughts and to ‘go deep’
when faced with wide thoughts.

can we not have a division of mental labour in business and society of course), but the two minutes and 35 seconds it takes for the laptop
such that mile-deep, inch-wide minds do mile-deep thinking to boot is way too long in the midst of a final negotiation for buying
requiring no more than an inch’s width of ‘data’ while inch-deep, 10 per cent of ‘FastFlyer.com’. That is not what seasoned investment
mile-wide minds do no more than an inch’s depth of thinking about bankers do: they have a simple rule that optimally combines remem-
at least a mile’s worth of data? Ponder this question for a moment bering with calculating, as follows: if you want to know how many
before proceeding further. years it takes for an investment to double in value at a compound
The answer: of course you can have such a division of labour! rate of Y per cent, just divide 71 by Y. So, 2.8 for a Y of 25.
We see it evolve quite naturally between experimental and theoret- Of course, when you ask any professional what it is that makes
ical physicists, and between engineering and design groups on one her do what she does as well as she does it, she will give you theories;
hand and marketing, sales and business development groups on the then, when you watch her in action, in the real-time tumult of life,
other. All of these different groups rely on an ‘invisible mind’ that the only thing you will see is a set of tricks. But there will be a
has designed the basic language, coordination framework and method to those tricks: they will all be mind stretchers. The diamind
problem statements they focus on, and this invisible mind is the can think ‘on its feet’ so that it can afford to behold a large number
diamind, which can see the advantages of mile-wide and mile-deep of emerging facts without feeling overwhelmed – and in this sense
thinking and which can design problems, languages and interac- it is mile-wide. It can switch between thinking deeply and thinking
tions that make optimal use of both styles. broadly, and it can integrate between the two.
Can diamonds be educated and developed? A quick examina-
Achieving Depth and Breadth Together tion of our ‘mind’s window’ metaphor will reveal that typical IQ,
We can build a diamind by ‘squaring the mind’ – that is, by stretch- MQ, EQ and other-Q tests are not likely to reliably pick up dia-
ing it, working our way ‘northeast’ to enlarge its depth and breadth minds from a population of random individuals. And, since these
at the same time. This is the distinguishing characteristic of the tests are the foundation of most other standardized tests, their
diamind: the willingness to resist making the trade- offs between blindness is likely to translate into the blindness of the traditional
‘generalizability and goodness of fit,’ between the ability to explain ways for selecting for quality in human capital.
a lot by a little (the hallmark of the mile-deep mind) and the ability What is needed is a new set of skills, and a new development
to see and observe a lot, come what may. program for nurturing them. Specifically, we need to develop ways
If you have to calculate 26 and you know nothing else, then you of building better ‘on-one’s-feet thinkers’, which we can only do by
have to compute ‘from scratch’ – 2 x 2 = 4 x 2 = 8 x 2 = 16 x … – all the precisely articulating the kinds of thinking needed for business
while counting the number of times you’re multiplying 2 by itself. problems. These skills are varied, but they rest on an ability to think
But if you know certain powers of 2, like 5 (32), 10 (1,024), and 16 about thinking while thinking. That is, to think about what you are
(32,768), then all you need to do to get to 26 is multiply 32 by 2; to get thinking about – about the complexity of the problem you are try-
to 29 is divide 1,024 by 2, and so forth. Get it? All you have to do is ing to solve, while at the same time, thinking through various
get good at the switcheroo – that is, get good at adaptively switching solutions to the problem. Diaminds do this naturally, and because
back and forth between remembering and calculating. the skill is precisely articulable, it can be transferred.
A more practical example: how long does it take for $1 million to How do you transfer a cognitive skill? You use the same principle
double in value at a compound interest rate of 25 per cent? Finance that humans have used for thousands of years for transferring
students will get out their calculators or laptops (pre-programmed, know-how to one another, from genome maps to atom bombs to

8 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2010

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(which unreflectingly looks for solutions even though it may have

Stretching the Mind’s Window Figure Two run out of time a long time ago) and mentalese, wherein you can ask
yourself: what are the minimal characteristics of a good solution?
How many steps will it take me to get there from here? Is there a
The Diamind: faster, cheaper, better alternate path? What has changed about the
mile wide, mile-deep solution space? How far oΩ am I from the solution?
Inch-deep,
B mile-wide mind Understanding why such flipping is useful is, of course, not the
Integrative
full picture: the flip itself is hard, which is why diaminds are so few
How many thinking and far between. But our research indicates that the flip is also
things you training path
think about teachable, which bodes well for the growth and proliferation of the
world’s diamind population.

In closing
Stretching the mind – a cornerstone of the diamind’s way of being
in the world – is all about the willful augmentation of the mind’s
Inch-wide
faculties of real-time thinking (the vertical axis of our window) and
mile-deep beholding (the horizontal axis of our window). The typical stance
mind
of the diamind is to go wide when faced with deep thoughts and to
‘go deep’ when faced with wide thoughts.
At stake in figuring out how mind stretching works is no less
How deeply you think about it D than achieving a better mind – one that can remain connected to
‘reality’ while retaining the ability to think its way past the immedi-
ate pull of various elements of that reality. The development of a
tight, precise language for representing what your mind is doing
while it is doing it goes a long way towards providing a pedagogical
solution to the development of diaminds.
quantum computers: you break down the skill into intelligible parts
and transfer each part separately. In this way, a complicated behav-
iour like ‘turning at the end of a swimming pool’ can be learned and
Mihnea Moldoveanu is the Marcel Desautels
taught: thrust your hind up, pull down with your arms – front arm
Professor of Integrative Thinking and director of
leading – feel the end of the pool with your toes, thrust forward. the Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking at
Repeat until mastered. the Rotman School of Management. Roger Martin
To master thinking about thinking while thinking, develop your is dean, Premier’s Research Chair, director of the
Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship and professor of Strategic
mentalese – your language that represents what your mind is doing
Management at the Rotman School. They are the co-authors of Diaminds:
at any one point in time, and what it is trying to accomplish – and get Decoding the Mental Habits of Successful Thinkers (Rotman/UTPress, 2009), from
good at flipping back and forth between your ‘everyday language’ which this was excerpted.

Rotman Magazine Fall 2010 / 9

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