Digital,  Integrative Thinking

How Integrative Thinking Helps You to Become a Leader?

Integrative thinking concept was first introduced by Mr. Graham Douglas in USA in 1986.  Integrative Thinking as the process of integrating intuition, reason and imagination in a human mind with a view to developing a holistic continuum of strategy, tactics, action, review and evaluation for addressing a problem in any field. The idea behind integrative thinking was to improve the overall thinking (operational) process of the company.  Integrative thinking is better than traditional thinking as we find only one solution in traditional thinking and we find multiple solutions in integrative thinking. We do things which we have told and we don’t find alternative solutions to do things differently. We never think why we are doing this; we can do those things in a different way. I used to write articles which were written already and never thought that I would write my own articles. I used integrative thinking and started writing articles by referring some articles which were already written. I used to write articles by taking ideas from two or more different sources then I started writing articles by own experience. As I am a digital marketing professional I started writing articles on the topics like social media, digital marketing, seo etc. by own experience. I have run many digital marketing campaigns so took facts and figures directly from campaign reports. It helped me to get more visitors, followers on my blog. I never got visitors and followers on blog before as I was following other bloggers. This is how Integrative Thinking helps to become a differential thinker.

Integrative thinking does help you to become a leader. You must have seen some examples of business leaders who have become successful in their professional life due to integrative and innovative thinking. Innovation and integrative thinking are key elements to become a successful leader. Every company makes standard procedure for the work they do the company. Suppose a company in manufacturing toys and it takes one hour to manufacture 1,000 toys per day and one labor. So product standard is 1,000 toys per hour and per labor. If you are an integrative thinker then you will find various ways to manufacture toys. There might be 4-5 procedures to manufacture toys. You will manufacture products by 4 to 5 ways and find the best procedure that manufacture toys at affordable cost and at fast rate. Suppose you find procedure 3 which manufacture products at fast and efficient way. It might manufacture 1,200 products per hour and per labor.

Whenever problems creep up the traditional thinker sees it as a haywire situation but integrative thinker will see it as a complexity and will not get stressed. He will find better ways to solve the problems. Suppose you are served a coffee with a piece of pizza then you would get happy and you will prefer to visit that coffee shop frequently. The same concept is used by Starbucks and these ideas worked and it boosted their revenue. Starbucks is become world’ reputed coffee-shop brand. People used to get bored when they visit lawyer’ office because they had to wait for a long time. So one lawyer from US made his office like coffee shop and he allowed his client to have coffee, watch TV and read newspapers. In this way integrative thinking would help you to do your day to day activities differently.

Integrative thinker is a one who guides their subordinate, co-worker, colleagues, team members, business associates to work differently. Traditional thinkers do their work what they have been told. Integrative thinker has to think differently and find best possible and better solution to do work efficiently, effectively etc.

Integrative thinking has changed my life. I always find new ways to solve every problem that creeps up in my professional life. I had to create campaign reports manually and it was taking too much time. So I created campaign dashboard where all the sources of enquiries are gathered by mediums, date etc. It helped me to manage campaign reports effectively.

Integrative Leader Should Follow Below Things to Become Successful:

  • Find better way to do things efficiently, effectively
  • Don’t stick to things which have been told
  • Create new leaders
  • Train subordinates, colleagues to become an Integrative Thinker
  • Offer innovative products and services
  • What else I can provide to my clients and company
  • Do challenge traditional thinking

Conclusion:

Integrative thinking not only helps you to become successful leader but also changes your thinking process to do things more efficiently, effectively. You need to challenge existing things which have been told and setup new standards by finding new solutions to the things which you do in the day to day life.

Anurag, with more than 7 years experience in the field of Digital Marketing, is a B.E (IT) from Mumbai University. Currently pursuing an MBA, he has over the years mastered the art and science of targeting the online customer, be it through SEO, SEM, SMM or other online media. A certified professional in Google Adwords & Analytics and Hubspot, he brings tremendous value and thinking to brands that want to optimize the use of the online medium.

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