Media Releases

Learn how successful leaders think — Rotman School’s Integrative Thinking Program comes to London, UK

May 11, 2011

TORONTO, ON – For the first time, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment will be tak­ing its Inte­gra­tive Think­ing pro­gram to Lon­don, UK. The three-day exec­u­tive pro­gram, which is based on the­o­ry that lies at the heart of the Rot­man MBA pro­gram, will take place on Sep­tem­ber 21 – 23, 2011.

Led by Dean Roger Mar­tin and Jen­nifer Riel of the Rot­man School’s Desau­tels Cen­tre for Inte­gra­tive Think­ing, the course is designed to help senior man­agers from all sec­tors make bet­ter deci­sions more of the time. Through research and inter­views with some of the world’s top lead­ers, Mar­tin iden­ti­fied a pat­tern of effec­tive prob­lem solv­ing that can be learned and devel­oped. Rather than look­ing at what lead­ers did, he looked at how lead­ers thought. That way of think­ing – which he termed Inte­gra­tive Think­ing – enables lead­ers to tack­le the most com­pli­cat­ed prob­lems and make bet­ter deci­sions.

“From inter­view­ing these great lead­ers, I saw a dis­tinc­tive approach to prob­lem solv­ing,” says Mar­tin. “These lead­ers were able to face the ten­sion of oppos­ing ideas and deal pro­duc­tive­ly with it. Instead of sim­ply choos­ing, they were able to lever­age the exist­ing choic­es to build a new, bet­ter choice. That new choice con­tained ele­ments of the orig­i­nal options, but was bet­ter than either one. These lead­ers inte­grat­ed across the exist­ing options, and cre­at­ed new val­ue.”

The exec­u­tive edu­ca­tion pro­gram takes the expe­ri­ences of the great lead­ers, from Jack Welch of Gen­er­al Elec­tric to AG Lafley of Proc­ter & Gam­ble to Isadore Sharp of Four Sea­sons Resorts and Hotels, as its start­ing point. From there, par­tic­i­pants learn the tools and tech­niques for apply­ing inte­gra­tive think­ing to their own busi­ness­es. “Our goal is to enable peo­ple to think dif­fer­ent­ly,” says Riel. “Using a high­ly inter­ac­tive for­mat, we ask pro­gram par­tic­i­pants to actu­al­ly try out the tools and engage in new ways of doing things.”

In the 2011 Finan­cial Times sur­vey of exec­u­tive edu­ca­tion, the Rot­man School’s open enrol­ment pro­grams were ranked num­ber one in the world for “new skills and learn­ing,” by pro­gram par­tic­i­pants includ­ing stu­dents in the Toron­to offer­ings of the Inte­gra­tive Think­ing pro­gram. In this cat­e­go­ry stu­dents were asked to rate the rel­e­vance of course con­tent to their jobs, the ease of imple­ment­ing their new skills when they returned to work, and the extent to which the course pro­vid­ed new ways to think.

The Lon­don pro­gram fol­lows sold-out offer­ings of the pro­gram twice a year in Toron­to. The pro­gram will also be avail­able in Toron­to in April and Octo­ber this year. Pre­lim­i­nary reg­is­tra­tion for the Lon­don pro­gram is avail­able at http://ep.rotman.utoronto.ca/open/integrativethinkingLondon/ and fur­ther infor­ma­tion about Inte­gra­tive Think­ing at the Rot­man School is online at www.rotman.utoronto.ca/integrativethinking.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

 

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
416–946-3818
mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool