Think Again the Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

Think Again the Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know §

Metadata §

• Author: Adam Grant
• Full Title: Think Again the Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know
• Category:#books

Summary §

In a world that is constantly changing, it’s essential to rethink our beliefs and assumptions to adapt. The book highlights the dangers of the first-instinct fallacy, where we cling onto old views instead of grappling with new ones, and emphasizes the importance of questioning our beliefs to prevent our ways of thinking from becoming habits that weigh us down. The author explains the concept of being in scientist mode, which involves leading with questions and puzzles, testing hypotheses, and discovering knowledge. Additionally, the book explores the cycles of rethinking, which involve intellectual humility, questioning, curiosity, and discovery.

I really liked the concept of confident humility. A sweet spot between armchair quarterback syndrome (cuñadismo) and impostor syndrome:

You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present.

The author also highlights the importance of being aware of cognitive biases, cultivating a growth mindset, and seeking out diverse perspectives. By being aware of our cognitive biases, we can overcome them and think more critically. Cultivating a growth mindset can help us approach challenges with a willingness to learn and grow, and seeking out diverse perspectives can broaden our understanding of the world and challenge our assumptions.

The book also emphasizes the value of task conflict, which can be beneficial when it brings diversity of thought, preventing us from getting trapped in overconfidence cycles. The author suggests forming a challenge network, a group of people who will help activate rethinking cycles by pushing us to be humble about our expertise, doubt our knowledge, and be curious about new perspectives.

Overall, the book emphasizes the importance of staying curious, humble, and open-minded, and the benefits of being wrong. By updating our beliefs frequently, admitting when we’re wrong, and seeking out diverse perspectives, we can become better thinkers and more effective problem-solvers.

Highlights §

• When a trio of psychologists conducted a comprehensive review of thirty-three studies, they found that in every one, the majority of answer revisions were from wrong to right. This phenomenon is known as the first-instinct fallacy. (Location 112)
• we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones. (Location 124)
• Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong. Reconsidering something we believe deeply can threaten our identities, making it feel as if we’re losing a part of ourselves. (Location 125)
• Our ways of thinking become habits that can weigh us down, and we don’t bother to question them until it’s too late. (Location 182)
• Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. (Location 257)
• Mike Lazaridis dreamed up the idea for the BlackBerry as a wireless communication device for sending and receiving emails. (Location 269)
• Most of us take pride in our knowledge and expertise, and in staying true to our beliefs and opinions. That makes sense in a stable world, where we get rewarded for having conviction in our ideas. The problem is that we live in a rapidly changing world, where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking. (Location 276)
• The accelerating pace of change means that we need to question our beliefs more readily than ever before. (Location 284)
• This is not an easy task. As we sit with our beliefs, they tend to become more extreme and more entrenched. I’m (Location 285)
• when it comes to our own knowledge and opinions, we often favor feeling right over being right. (Location 295)
• As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. In each of these modes, we take on a particular identity and use a distinct set of tools. We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals. We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other people’s reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case. We shift into politician mode when we’re seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents. The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our own views. (Location 305)
• If you’re a scientist by trade, rethinking is fundamental to your profession. You’re paid to be constantly aware of the limits of your understanding. You’re expected to doubt what you know, be curious about what you don’t know, and update your views based on new data. In (Location 322)
• We move into scientist mode when we’re searching for the truth: we run experiments to test hypotheses and discover knowledge. Scientific tools aren’t reserved for people with white coats and beakers, and using (Location 327)
• to view startups through a scientist’s goggles. From that perspective, their strategy is a theory, customer interviews help to develop hypotheses, and their minimum viable product and prototype are experiments to test those hypotheses. Their task is to rigorously measure the results and make decisions based on whether their hypotheses are supported or refuted. (Location 336)
• the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs. (Location 382)
• The better you are at crunching numbers, the more spectacularly you fail at analyzing patterns that contradict your views. (Location 386)
• My favorite bias is the “I’m not biased” bias, in which people believe they’re more objective than others. It turns out that smart people are more likely to fall into this trap. The brighter you are, the harder it can be to see your own limitations. Being good at thinking can make you worse at rethinking. (Location 393)
• in scientist mode, we refuse to let our ideas become ideologies. We don’t start with answers or solutions; we lead with questions and puzzles. We don’t preach from intuition; we teach from evidence. We don’t just have healthy skepticism about other people’s arguments; we dare to disagree with our own arguments. (Location 395)
• In preacher mode, changing our minds is a mark of moral weakness; in scientist mode, it’s a sign of intellectual integrity. In prosecutor mode, allowing ourselves to be persuaded is admitting defeat; in scientist mode, it’s a step toward the truth. In politician mode, we flip-flop in response to carrots and sticks; in scientist mode, we shift in the face of sharper logic and stronger data. (Location 400)
• the purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs. (Location 408)
• the process of rethinking, I’ve found that it often unfolds in a cycle. It starts with intellectual humility— knowing what we don’t know. (Location 423)
• Recognizing our shortcomings opens the door to doubt. As we question our current understanding, we become curious about what information we’re missing. That search leads us to new discoveries, which in turn maintain our humility by reinforcing how much we still have to learn. (Location 426)
• If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom. (Location 428)
• when people are resistant to change, it helps to reinforce what will stay the same. Visions for change are more compelling when they include visions of continuity. Although our strategy might evolve, our identity will endure. (Location 462)
• Anton’s syndrome— a deficit of self-awareness in which a person is oblivious to a physical disability but otherwise doing fairly well cognitively. (Location 505)
• The opposite of armchair quarterback syndrome is impostor syndrome, where competence exceeds confidence. (Location 544)
• According to what’s now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, it’s when we lack competence that we’re most likely to be brimming with overconfidence. (Location 559)
• It’s when we progress from novice to amateur that we become overconfident. (Location 618)
• As we gain experience, we lose some of our humility. (Location 627)
• You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. That’s the sweet spot of confidence. (Location 646)
• We become blinded by arrogance when we’re utterly convinced of our strengths and our strategies. We get paralyzed by doubt when we lack conviction in both. (Location 648)
• What we want to attain is confident humility: having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem. That gives us enough doubt to reexamine our old knowledge and enough confidence to pursue new insights. (Location 650)
• the most productive and innovative teams aren’t run by leaders who are confident or humble. The most effective leaders score high in both confidence and humility. Although they have faith in their strengths, they’re also keenly aware of their weaknesses. (Location 668)
• we still have a lot to learn about when impostor syndrome is beneficial versus when it’s detrimental. Still, it leaves me wondering if we’ve been misjudging impostor syndrome by seeing it solely as a disorder. (Location 695)
• When our impostor fears crop up, the usual advice is to ignore them— give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. Instead, we might be better off embracing those fears, (Location 698)
• impostor is that it can motivate us to work harder. (Location 700)
• When we feel like impostors, we think we have something to prove. Impostors may be the last to jump in, but they may also be the last to bail out. (Location 705)
• impostor thoughts can motivate us to work smarter. When we don’t believe we’re going to win, we have nothing to lose by rethinking our strategy. (Location 706)
• feeling like an impostor can make us better learners. Having some doubts about our knowledge and skills takes us off a pedestal, encouraging us to seek out insights from others. (Location 708)
• Plenty of evidence suggests that confidence is just as often the result of progress as the cause of it. (Location 720)
• sociologist Murray Davis argued that when ideas survive, it’s not because they’re true— it’s because they’re interesting. What makes an idea interesting is that it challenges our weakly held opinions. (Location 797)
• Neuroscientists find that when our core beliefs are challenged, it can trigger the amygdala, the primitive “lizard brain” that breezes right past cool rationality and activates a hot fight-or-flight response. The anger and fear are visceral: it feels as if we’ve been punched in the mind. The totalitarian ego comes to the rescue with mental armor. (Location 818)
• Discovering I was wrong felt joyful because it meant I’d learned something. (Location 845)
• Attachment. That’s what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them. To unlock the joy of being wrong, we need to detach. (Location 849)
• two kinds of detachment are especially useful: detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity. (Location 850)
• Most of us are accustomed to defining ourselves in terms of our beliefs, ideas, and ideologies. This can become a problem when it prevents us from changing our minds as the world changes and knowledge evolves. (Location 864)
• Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. (Location 868)
• The single most important driver of forecasters’ success was how often they updated their beliefs. (Location 909)
• If being wrong repeatedly leads us to the right answer, the experience of being wrong itself can become joyful. (Location 932)
• I consider all of my opinions tentative. When the facts change, I change my opinions.” (Location 948)
• Research suggests that identifying even a single reason why we might be wrong can be enough to curb overconfidence. (Location 949)
• “Accept the fact that you’re going to be wrong,” Jean-Pierre advises. “Try to disprove yourself. When you’re wrong, it’s not something to be depressed about. Say, ‘Hey, I discovered something!’” (Location 953)
• If we’re insecure, we make fun of others. If we’re comfortable being wrong, we’re not afraid to poke fun at ourselves. Laughing at ourselves reminds us that although we might take our decisions seriously, we don’t have to take ourselves too seriously. Research suggests that the more frequently we make fun of ourselves, the happier we tend to be. (Location 965)
• I’ve noticed a paradox in great scientists and superforecasters: the reason they’re so comfortable being wrong is that they’re terrified of being wrong. What sets them apart is the time horizon. They’re determined to reach the correct answer in the long run, and they know that means they have to be open to stumbling, backtracking, and rerouting in the short run. (Location 971)
• When you form an opinion, ask yourself what would have to happen to prove it false. Then keep track of your views so you can see when you were right, when you were wrong, and how your thinking has evolved. (Location 980)
• Psychologists find that admitting we were wrong doesn’t make us look less competent. It’s a display of honesty and a willingness to learn. (Location 990)
• The teams that performed poorly started with more relationship conflict than task conflict. They entered into personal feuds early on and were so busy disliking one another that they didn’t feel comfortable challenging one another. It took months for many of the teams to make real headway on their relationship issues, and by the time they did manage to debate key decisions, it was often too late to rethink their directions. (Location 1047)
• relationship conflict is generally bad for performance, but some task conflict can be beneficial: it’s been linked to higher creativity and smarter choices. (Location 1057)
• Task conflict can be constructive when it brings diversity of thought, preventing us from getting trapped in overconfidence cycles. It can help us stay humble, surface doubts, and make us curious about what we might be missing. (Location 1063)
• Kids whose parents clash constructively feel more emotionally safe in elementary school, and over the next few years they actually demonstrate more helpfulness and compassion toward their classmates. (Location 1068)
• a challenge network, a group of people we trust to point out our blind spots and help us overcome our weaknesses. Their role is to activate rethinking cycles by pushing us to be humble about our expertise, doubt our knowledge, and be curious about new perspectives. (Location 1107)
• The ideal members of a challenge network are disagreeable, because they’re fearless about questioning the way things have always been done and holding us accountable for thinking again. (Location 1109)
• I’ve watched too many leaders shield themselves from task conflict. As they gain power, they tune out boat-rockers and listen to bootlickers. (Location 1134)
• We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. (Location 1139)
• In science, a challenge network is often a cornerstone of the peer-review process. We submit articles anonymously, and they’re reviewed blindly by independent experts. (Location 1148)
• looking for disagreeable people who are givers, not takers. Disagreeable givers often make the best critics: their intent is to elevate the work, not feed their own egos. They don’t criticize because they’re insecure; they challenge because they care. They dish out tough love. (Location 1152)
• a good fight club. The first rule: avoiding an argument is bad manners. Silence disrespects the value of your views and our ability to have a civil disagreement. (Location 1157)
• They don’t disagree just for the sake of it; they disagree because they care. “Whether you disagree loudly, or quietly yet persistently put forward a different perspective,” Nicole explains, “we come together to support the common goal of excellence— of making great films.” (Location 1181)
• Agreeableness is about seeking social harmony, not cognitive consensus. (Location 1185)
• when I argue with someone, it’s not a display of disrespect— it’s a sign of respect. It means I value their views enough to contest them. If their opinions didn’t matter to me, I wouldn’t bother. (Location 1187)
• John’s natural tendency is to avoid conflict: at restaurants, if the waiter brings him the wrong dish, he just goes ahead and eats it anyway. “But when I’m involved in something bigger than myself,” he observes, “I feel like I have an opportunity, a responsibility really, to speak up, speak out, debate. (Location 1193)
• Disagreeable people don’t just challenge us to think again. They also make agreeable people comfortable arguing, too. (Location 1202)
• A major problem with task conflict is that it often spills over into relationship conflict. (Location 1207)
• Experiments show that simply framing a dispute as a debate rather than as a disagreement signals that you’re receptive to considering dissenting opinions and changing your mind, which in turn motivates the other person to share more information with you. (Location 1219)
• Starting a disagreement by asking, “Can we debate?” sends a message that you want to think like a scientist, (Location 1222)
• When we argue about why, we run the risk of becoming emotionally attached to our positions and dismissive of the other side’s. We’re more likely to have a good fight if we argue about how. (Location 1230)
• This section of the book is about convincing other people to rethink their opinions. When we’re trying to persuade people, we frequently take an adversarial approach. Instead of opening their minds, we effectively shut them down or rile them up. (Location 1337)
• In an informal debate, you’re trying to change the mind of your conversation partner. That’s a kind of negotiation, where you’re trying to reach an agreement about the truth. (Location 1360)
• In a negotiation, agreeing with someone else’s argument is disarming. (Location 1370)
• Most people think of arguments as being like a pair of scales: the more reasons we can pile up on our side, the more it will tip the balance in our favor. Yet the experts did the exact opposite: They actually presented fewer reasons to support their case. (Location 1376)
• “A weak argument generally dilutes a strong one.” (Location 1378)
• The more reasons we put on the table, the easier it is for people to discard the shakiest one. Once they reject one of our justifications, they can easily dismiss our entire case. (Location 1379)
• Recent (Location 1387)
• We won’t have much luck changing other people’s minds if we refuse to change ours. We can demonstrate openness by acknowledging where we agree with our critics and even what we’ve learned from them. Then, when we ask what views they might be willing to revise, we’re not hypocrites. (Location 1397)
• Being reasonable literally means that we can be reasoned with, that we’re open to evolving our views in light of logic and data. (Location 1404)
• when audiences are skeptical of our view, have a stake in the issue, and tend to be stubborn that piling on justifications is most likely to backfire. If they’re resistant to rethinking, more reasons simply give them more ammunition to shoot our views down. (Location 1445)
• Psychologists have long found that the person most likely to persuade you to change your mind is you. You get to pick the reasons you find most compelling, and you come away with a real sense of ownership over them. (Location 1465)
• When we point out that there are areas where we agree and acknowledge that they have some valid points, we model confident humility and encourage them to follow suit. When we support our argument with a small number of cohesive, compelling reasons, we encourage them to start doubting their own opinion. And when we ask genuine questions, we leave them intrigued to learn more. We don’t have to convince them that we’re right— we just need to open their minds to the possibility that they might be wrong. (Location 1472)
• When someone becomes hostile, if you respond by viewing the argument as a war, you can either attack or retreat. If instead you treat it as a dance, you have another option— you can sidestep. (Location 1508)
• Having a conversation about the conversation shifts attention away from the substance of the disagreement and toward the process for having a dialogue. The more anger and hostility the other person expresses, the more curiosity and interest you show. (Location 1509)
• move that expert negotiators made more often than average negotiators. They were more likely to comment on their feelings about the process and test their understanding of the other side’s feelings: (Location 1513)
• If we hold an opinion weakly, expressing it strongly can backfire. Communicating it with some uncertainty signals confident humility, invites curiosity, and leads to a more nuanced discussion. (Location 1529)
• there’s evidence that people are more interested in hiring candidates who acknowledge legitimate weaknesses as opposed to bragging or humblebragging. (Location 1552)
• By asking questions rather than thinking for the audience, we invite them to join us as a partner and think for themselves. If we approach an argument as a war, there will be winners and losers. If we see it more as a dance, we can begin to choreograph a way forward. By considering the strongest version of an opponent’s perspective and limiting our responses to our few best steps, we have a better chance of finding a rhythm. (Location 1561)
• When people hold prejudice toward a rival group, they’re often willing to do whatever it takes to elevate their own group and undermine their rivals— even if it means doing harm or doing wrong. (Location 1617)
• In every human society, people are motivated to seek belonging and status. Identifying with a group checks both boxes at the same time: we become part of a tribe, and we take pride when our tribe wins. (Location 1630)
• our beliefs are like pairs of reality goggles. We use them to make sense of the world and navigate our surroundings. A threat to our opinions cracks our goggles, leaving our vision blurred. (Location 1650)
• we become especially hostile when trying to defend opinions that we know, deep down, are false. Rather than trying on a different pair of goggles, we become mental contortionists, twisting and turning until we find an angle of vision that keeps our current views intact. (Location 1652)
• When you get to see an overview of the Earth from outer space, you realize you share a common identity with all human beings. (Location 1682)
• common identity can build bridges between rivals. (Location 1684)
• In an ideal world, learning about individual group members will humanize the group, but often getting to know a person better just establishes her as different from the rest of her group. (Location 1717)
• In psychology, counterfactual thinking involves imagining how the circumstances of our lives could have unfolded differently. (Location 1779)
• People gain humility when they reflect on how different circumstances could have led them to different beliefs. They might conclude that some of their past convictions had been too simplistic and begin to question some of their negative views. (Location 1787)
• We might question the underlying belief that it makes sense to hold opinions about groups at all. (Location 1819)
• It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.—Attributed to Dick Cavett (Location 1864)
• Refuting a point of view produces antibodies against future influence attempts. We become more certain of our opinions and less curious about alternative views. (Location 1890)
• motivational interviewing. The central premise is that we can rarely motivate someone else to change. We’re better off helping them find their own motivation to change. (Location 1911)
• Motivational interviewing starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity. We don’t know what might motivate someone else to change, but we’re genuinely eager to find out. The goal isn’t to tell people what to do; it’s to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities. Our role is to hold up a mirror so they can see themselves more clearly, and then empower them to examine their beliefs and behaviors. (Location 1926)
• The process of motivational interviewing involves three key techniques: Asking open-ended questions Engaging in reflective listening Affirming the person’s desire and ability to change (Location 1931)
• When we try to convince people to think again, our first instinct is usually to start talking. Yet the most effective way to help others open their minds is often to listen. (Location 1978)
• In motivational interviewing, there’s a distinction between sustain talk and change talk. Sustain talk is commentary about maintaining the status quo. Change talk is referencing a desire, ability, need, or commitment to make adjustments. (Location 1999)
• The idea is to explain your understanding of other people’s reasons for change, to check on whether you’ve missed or misrepresented anything, and to inquire about their plans and possible next steps. (Location 2018)
• A good guide doesn’t stop at helping people change their beliefs or behaviors. Our work isn’t done until we’ve helped them accomplish their goals. (Location 2024)
• Part of the beauty of motivational interviewing is that it generates more openness in both directions. Listening can encourage others to reconsider their stance toward us, but it also gives us information that can lead us to question our own views about them. (Location 2025)
• Listening well is more than a matter of talking less. It’s a set of skills in asking and responding. It starts with showing more interest in other people’s interests rather than trying to judge their status or prove our own. (Location 2052)
• A skilled motivational interviewer resists the righting reflex— although people want a doctor to fix their broken bones, when it comes to the problems in their heads, they often want sympathy rather than solutions. (Location 2059)
• “To speak with him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.” (Location 2085)
• Inverse charisma. What a wonderful turn of phrase to capture the magnetic quality of a great listener. (Location 2087)
• Arnaud asked if he could share some information about vaccines based on his own expertise. “I started a dialogue,” he told me. “The aim was to build a trusting relationship. If you present information without permission, no one will listen to you.” (Location 2096)
• We now know that where complicated issues are concerned, seeing the opinions of the other side is not enough. Social media platforms have exposed us to them, but they haven’t changed our minds. (Location 2145)
• Hearing an opposing opinion doesn’t necessarily motivate you to rethink your own stance; it makes it easier for you to stick to your guns (Location 2149)
• Psychologists have a name for this: binary bias. It’s a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories. (Location 2151)
• Walt Whitman, it takes a multitude of views to help people realize that they too contain multitudes. (Location 2155)
• A dose of complexity can disrupt overconfidence cycles and spur rethinking cycles. It gives us more humility about our knowledge and more doubts about our opinions, and it can make us curious enough to discover information we were lacking. (Location 2156)
• Non (Location 2178)
• A fundamental lesson of desirability bias is that our beliefs are shaped by our motivations. What we believe depends on what we want to believe. (Location 2189)
• To overcome binary bias, a good starting point is to become aware of the range of perspectives across a given spectrum. (Location 2212)
• As (Location 2228)
• when experts express doubt, they become more persuasive. When someone knowledgeable admits uncertainty, it surprises people, and they end up paying more attention to the substance of the argument. (Location 2235)
• If you want to get better at conveying complexity, it’s worth taking a close look at how scientists communicate. One key step is to include caveats. (Location 2260)
• Researchers typically feature multiple paragraphs about the limitations of each study in their articles. We see them less as holes in our work and more as portholes to future discoveries. (Location 2262)
• In a series of experiments, psychologists demonstrated that when news reports about science included caveats, they succeeded in capturing readers’ interest and keeping their minds open. (Location 2264)
• idea cults— groups that stir up a batch of oversimplified intellectual Kool-Aid and recruit followers to serve it widely. They preach the merits of their pet concept and prosecute anyone who calls for nuance or complexity. (Location 2307)
• Appreciating complexity reminds us that no behavior is always effective and that all cures have unintended consequences. (Location 2316)
• John Rawls, the veil of ignorance asks us to judge the justice of a society by whether we’d join it without knowing our place in it. I think the scientist’s veil of ignorance is to ask whether we’d accept the results of a study based on the methods involved, without knowing what the conclusion will be. (Location 2319)
• What works is not perspective-taking but perspective-seeking: actually talking to people to gain insight into the nuances of their views. That’s what good scientists do: instead of drawing conclusions about people based on minimal clues, they test their hypotheses by striking up conversations. (Location 2332)
• In one experiment, if an ideological opponent merely began by acknowledging that “I have a lot of respect for people like you who stand by their principles,” people were less likely to see her as an adversary— and showed her more generosity. (Location 2339)
• What (Location 2351)
• movement to teach kids to think like fact-checkers: the guidelines include (1) “interrogate information instead of simply consuming it,” (2) “reject rank and popularity as a proxy for reliability,” and (3) “understand that the sender of information is often not its source.” (Location 2451)
• Lectures aren’t designed to accommodate dialogue or disagreement; they turn students into passive receivers of information rather than active thinkers. (Location 2487)
• one of the hallmarks of an open mind is responding to confusion with curiosity and interest. One student put it eloquently: “I need time for my confusion.” Confusion can be a cue that there’s new territory to be explored or a fresh puzzle to be solved. (Location 2580)
• he turned the classroom into a challenge network. Every week— and sometimes every day— the entire class would do a critique session. (Location 2595)
• As (Location 2607)
• education is more than the information we accumulate in our heads. It’s the habits we develop as we keep revising our drafts and the skills we build to keep learning. (Location 2630)
• Rethinking is more likely to happen in a learning culture, where growth is the core value and rethinking cycles are routine. In learning cultures, the norm is for people to know what they don’t know, doubt their existing practices, and stay curious about new routines to try out. (Location 2679)
• psychologically safe teams reported more errors, but they actually made fewer errors. By freely admitting their mistakes, they were then able to learn what had caused them and eliminate them moving forward. In psychologically unsafe teams, people hid their mishaps to avoid penalties, which made it difficult for anyone to diagnose the root causes and prevent future problems. They kept repeating the same mistakes. (Location 2691)
• psychological safety is not a matter of relaxing standards, making people comfortable, being nice and agreeable, or giving unconditional praise. It’s fostering a climate of respect, trust, and openness in which people can raise concerns and suggestions without fear of reprisal. It’s the foundation of a learning culture. (Location 2698)
• A (Location 2706)
• How do you know? It’s a question we need to ask more often, both of ourselves and of others. The power lies in its frankness. It’s nonjudgmental— a straightforward expression of doubt and curiosity that doesn’t put people on the defensive. (Location 2729)
• I knew that changing the culture of an entire organization is daunting, while changing the culture of a team is more feasible. It starts with modeling the values we want to promote, identifying and praising others who exemplify them, and building a coalition of colleagues who are committed to making the change. (Location 2743)
• managers to share their past experiences with receiving feedback and their future development goals. We advised them to tell their teams about a time when they benefited from constructive criticism and to identify the areas that they were working to improve now. (Location 2753)
• By admitting some of their imperfections out loud, managers demonstrated that they could take it— and made a public commitment to remain open to feedback. They normalized vulnerability, making their teams more comfortable opening up about their own struggles. Their employees gave more useful feedback because they knew where their managers were working to grow. (Location 2754)
• managers to create practices to keep the door open: they started holding “ask me anything” coffee chats, opening weekly one-on-one meetings by asking for constructive criticism, and setting up monthly team sessions where everyone shared their development goals and progress. (Location 2757)
• It takes confident humility to admit that we’re a work in progress. It shows that we care more about improving ourselves than proving ourselves.* (Location 2787)
• We preach about its virtues and stop questioning its vices, no longer curious about where it’s imperfect and where it could improve. Organizational learning should be an ongoing activity, but best practices imply it has reached an endpoint. We might be better off looking for better practices. (Location 2795)
• Exclusively praising and rewarding results is dangerous because it breeds overconfidence in poor strategies, incentivizing people to keep doing things the way they’ve always done them. (Location 2808)
• Amy Edmondson finds that when psychological safety exists without accountability, people tend to stay within their comfort zone, and when there’s accountability but not safety, people tend to stay silent in an anxiety zone. When we combine the two, we create a learning zone. (Location 2815)
• In learning cultures, people don’t stop keeping score. They expand the scorecard to consider processes as well as outcomes: Even if the outcome of a decision is positive, it doesn’t necessarily qualify as a success. If the process was shallow, you were lucky. If the decision process was deep, you can count it as an improvement: you’ve discovered a better practice. If the outcome is negative, it’s a failure only if the decision process was shallow. If the result was negative but you evaluated the decision thoroughly, you’ve run a smart experiment. (Location 2824)
• Rethinking is more likely when we separate the initial decision makers from the later decision evaluators. (Location 2841)
• When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isn’t going as we hoped, our first instinct isn’t usually to rethink it. Instead, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment. (Location 2931)
• Sunk costs are a factor, but the most important causes appear to be psychological rather than economic. Escalation of commitment happens because we’re rationalizing creatures, constantly searching for self-justifications for our prior beliefs as a way to soothe our egos, shield our images, and validate our past decisions. (Location 2935)
• gritty people are more likely to overplay their hands in roulette and more willing to stay the course in tasks at which they’re failing and success is impossible. (Location 2940)
• There’s a fine line between heroic persistence and foolish stubbornness. (Location 2943)
• what do you want to be when you grow up? Pondering that question can foster a fixed mindset about work and self. “I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child,” Michelle Obama writes. “What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”* (Location 2947)
• Kids might be better off learning about careers as actions to take rather than as identities to claim. When they see work as what they do rather than who they are, they become more open to exploring different possibilities. (Location 2956)
• When second and third graders learned about “doing science” rather than “being scientists,” they were more excited about pursuing science. Becoming a scientist might seem out of reach, but the act of experimenting is something we can all try out. (Location 2961)
• A successful relationship requires regular rethinking. Sometimes being considerate means reconsidering something as simple as our habits. (Location 3024)
• the more people value happiness, the less happy they often become with their lives. (Location 3038)
• we spend too much time striving for peak happiness, overlooking the fact that happiness depends more on the frequency of positive emotions than their intensity. (Location 3043)
• when we hunt for happiness, we overemphasize pleasure at the expense of purpose. (Location 3044)
• When we pursue happiness, we often start by changing our surroundings. We expect to find bliss in a warmer climate or a friendlier dorm, but any joy that those choices bring about is typically temporary. (Location 3063)
• “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” (Location 3066)
• students who changed their actions by joining a new club, adjusting their study habits, or starting a new project experienced lasting gains in happiness. (Location 3067)
• when it comes to careers, instead of searching for the job where we’ll be happiest, we might be better off pursuing the job where we expect to learn and contribute the most. (Location 3077)
• passions are often developed, not discovered. (Location 3078)
• By investing in learning and problem solving, we can develop our passions— and build the skills necessary to do the work and lead the lives we find worthwhile. (Location 3081)
• happiness less as a goal and more as a by-product of mastery and meaning. (Location 3090)
• “Those only are happy,” philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, “who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.” (Location 3091)
• open systems are governed by at least two key principles: there are always multiple paths to the same end (equifinality), and the same starting point can be a path to many different ends (multifinality). (Location 3095)
• At work and in life, the best we can do is plan for what we want to learn and contribute over the next year or two, and stay open to what might come next. (Location 3102)
• writing out a plan for your life “is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” (Location 3104)
• in every line of work, there are people who become active architects of their own jobs. They rethink their roles through job crafting— changing their daily actions to better fit their values, interests, and skills. (Location 3111)
• The simplest way to start rethinking our options is to question what we do daily. (Location 3125)
• The scientific method can be traced back several millennia, at least as far back as Aristotle and the ancient Greeks. I was surprised to learn, then, that the word scientist is relatively new: it wasn’t coined until 1833. (Location 3171)
• There’s a lot we don’t know about how to communicate confident humility. When people lack knowledge about a complex topic— like stopping a pandemic or reinvigorating an economy— they might be comfortable with leaders admitting what they don’t know today and doubting the statements they made yesterday. (Location 3204)
• Complex problems like pandemics, climate change, and political polarization call on us to stay mentally flexible. In the face of any number of unknown and evolving threats, humility, doubt, and curiosity are vital to discovery. (Location 3209)