Roger L. Martin - A New Way to Think

I would pay 10 or 110 times the cover price for just the table of contents of this extraordinary book. In fact, I suggest you post the contents page on your work or home office wall and use it as an all-you-need-to-know daily checklist/spur to action. Please, please do not read A New Way to Think. Ingest it, immerse yourself in ithead and, especially, heart. It is spot-on and, if applied assiduously, I guarantee it will change your life, the lives of those you work with, and the community in which you work.

TOM PETERS, management guru; bestselling author, In Search of Excellence

Roger Martin has an undeniable gift for simplifying the complex and nuanced scenarios of management and strategy down to the main thing. And the main thing is not always what you assume it is. Often, we get in our own way when solving problems with a new way of thinking, because were afraid it wont yield better results than the tried-and-true methods of yesterday. Martin gives us a framework for thinking through the most common problems with a new lens on what might work to bring about the most effective, long-term solution.

JULIA HARTZ, cofounder and CEO, Eventbrite

A New Way to Think is an essential how-to guide for building organizations that thrivethrough todays uncertainties and long into the future. Like a day with a great mentor, this book burns through trendy management pablum to give readers the hidden truths and timeless questions their organization really needs to reach its potential.

ZACHARY FIRST, Executive Director, Drucker Institute

In A New Way to Think, Roger Martin unpacks why so many cherished frameworks in business arent working and gives us smarter alternatives.

DREW HOUSTON, CEO, Dropbox

Rather than replacing traditional models with better models, I favor Roger Martins underlying proposition in this book, which is to replace traditional ways of thinking with new ways of thinking. New ways of thinking must shift from centering around the organization to centering around human value.

ZHANG RUIMIN, founder and Chairman, Emeritus, Board of Directors, Haier Group

Waze for executive leadership. Through succinct and entertaining vignettes, Roger Martin helps you navigate the terrain, make the right choices, and avoid falling victim to common mistakes. A New Way to Think is an important read for anyone leading an organization!

STEPHANIE COHEN, Global Cohead, Consumer and Wealth Management, Goldman Sachs

In order to stay nimble and competitive, you need to challenge your most basic assumptions on the best way to do business. No one does this more insightfully than Roger Martin. Read A New Way to Think to help you face your toughest decisions and to survive and thrive as a leader.

ALEX OSTERWALDER, cofounder, Strategyzer; bestselling coauthor, Business Model Generation

A New Way to Think

Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness

Roger L. Martin

Harvard Business Review Press

Boston, Massachusetts

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Copyright 2022 Roger L. Martin

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to , or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Martin, Roger L., author.

Title: A new way to think : your guide to superior management effectiveness / Roger L. Martin.

Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press, [2022] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021059746 (print) | LCCN 2021059747 (ebook) | ISBN 9781647823511 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781647823528 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Creative ability in business. | Success in business. | Industrial management. | Organizational effectiveness.

Classification: LCC HD53 .M36444 2022 (print) | LCC HD53 (ebook) | DDC 650.1dc23/eng/20220107

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059746

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059747

Cataloging-in-Publication data is forthcoming.

ISBN: 978-1-64782-351-1

eISBN: 978-1-64782-352-8

To Marie-Louise, the love of my life

Its often said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. By that definition, I have seen plenty of it in my four decades as a strategy adviser.

When executives and managers find that a given framework, general practice, theory, or way of thinkingwhat I will call a model for shortdoesnt lead to the desired outcome, they almost automatically assume that the model in question wasnt applied rigorously enough. The prescription, therefore, is to apply the model again, more vigorously. And when that produces the same unsatisfactory result, the prescription is to try even harder. If focusing on maximizing shareholder value doesnt maximize shareholder value, then focus more singularly on shareholder value. If making execution a priority doesnt result in better execution, make execution still more of a priority. If your culture doesnt change in the direction you want, then mandate culture change even more aggressively.

Existing models are extraordinarily persistent in the face of ineffectiveness and that is because our use of models to organize our thinking and action is so automatic. As MIT Sloan system dynamics professor John Sterman points out, human beings dont consciously make a choice of whether to model; it is only a question of which model. On that which front, we prefer to apply a known and accepted way of thinking about a problem at hand because we know that thinking from first principles, as we sometimes must do when we encounter an unprecedented situation for which we have no model, is arduous, time-consuming, and downright scary. And once we have been confronted by that novel situation, next time round well almost certainly apply some form of the model we eventually figured out. We favor using existing available models because its easier and quicker. This inclination is reinforced over and over in our formal training. From the very start, the education system teaches us modelshow to multiply, how to structure a paragraph, how to categorize speciesand gets us to practice using them over and over until each becomes second nature.

Business education is no different. It teaches a vast array of modelsFive Forces, CAPM, the 4 Ps, EOQ, Black Scholes, GAAP, WACC, to name just a few. Over time, competing models battle for dominance, and as happens in nature with species, there is typically convergence on a dominant design in each domain in management. The winners tend to become received business wisdom. These winners get used over and over again, becoming the default framework in the contexts for which they were designed. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that when one of these models doesnt seem to work, the manager in question wont reject the model but will instead assume personal responsibility for failing to correctly apply it. Its extremely difficultand socially riskyto question an established model that many people believe and to start building a new model from scratch.