Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

by Adam M. Grant

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY WHEN YOU HAVE IT WHEN YOU DON’T See mistakes as opportunities to learn See mistakes as threats to your career Willing to take risks and fail Unwilling to rock the boat Speaking your mind in meetings Keeping your ideas to yourself Openly sharing your struggles Only touting your strengths Trust in your teammates and supervisors Fear of your teammates and supervisors Sticking your neck out Having your head chopped off

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.

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.[*] If that mindset spreads far enough within an organization, it can give people the freedom and courage to speak up.

In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time. We preach about its virtues and stop questioning its vices, no longer curious about where it’s imperfect and where it could improve.

Along with outcome accountability, we can create process accountability by evaluating how carefully different options are considered as people make decisions. A bad decision process is based on shallow thinking. A good process is grounded in deep thinking and rethinking, enabling people to form and express independent opinions. Research shows that when we have to explain the procedures behind our decisions in real time, we think more critically and process the possibilities more thoroughly.

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. People feel free to experiment—and to poke holes in one another’s experiments in service of making them better. They become a challenge network.

Rethinking is more likely when we separate the initial decision makers from the later decision evaluators.

In the past, the onus would’ve been on her to prove it was not safe to launch. Now the onus was on the team to prove it was safe to launch. That meant approaching their expertise with more humility, their decision with more doubt, and their analysis with more curiosity about the causes and potential consequences of the problem.

What do you want to be when you grow up? As

case study #bls

blirtatiousness. Yep, that’s an actual research concept, derived from the combination of blurting and flirting.

escalation of commitment.

Sunk costs are a factor, but the most important causes appear to be psychological rather than economic.

Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance, and research shows that it can play an important role in motivating us to accomplish long-term goals.

There’s a fine line between heroic persistence and foolish stubbornness. Sometimes the best kind of grit is gritting our teeth and turning around.

identity foreclosure—when we settle prematurely on a sense of self without enough due diligence, and close our minds to alternative selves.

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. “

Some kids dream too small. They foreclose on following in family footsteps and never really consider alternatives. You probably know some people who faced the opposite problem. They dreamed too big, becoming attached to a lofty vision that wasn’t realistic.

Kids might be better off learning about careers as actions to take rather than as identities to claim.

For the record, I think it’s better to lose the past two years of progress than to waste the next twenty. In hindsight, identity foreclosure is a Band-Aid: it covers up an identity crisis, but fails to cure it.

Just as they make appointments with the doctor and the dentist even when nothing is wrong, they should schedule checkups on their careers. I encourage them to put a reminder in their calendars to ask some key questions twice a year. When did you form the aspirations you’re currently pursuing, and how have you changed since then? Have you reached a learning plateau in your role or your workplace, and is it time to consider a pivot? Answering these career checkup questions is a way to periodically activate rethinking cycles. It helps students maintain humility about their ability to predict the future, contemplate doubts about their plans, and stay curious enough to discover new possibilities or reconsider previously discarded ones.

There’s even evidence that placing a great deal of importance on happiness is a risk factor for depression. Why?

This theory is consistent with data suggesting that meaning is healthier than happiness, and that people who look for purpose in their work are more successful in pursuing their passions—and less likely to quit their jobs—than those who look for joy. While enjoyment waxes and wanes, meaning tends to last.

It’s our actions—not our surroundings—that bring us meaning and belonging.

Psychologists find that passions are often developed, not discovered.

As we get older, we become more focused on searching for meaning—and we’re most likely to find it in actions that benefit others. My favorite test of meaningful work is to ask: if this job didn’t exist, how much worse off would people be? It’s near midlife that this question often begins to loom large. At around this time, in both work and life, we feel we have more to give (and less to lose), and we’re especially keen to share our knowledge and skills with the next generation.

Phase 1: I’m not important Phase 2: I’m important Phase 3: I want to contribute to something important

It’s left me thinking about happiness less as a goal and more as a by-product of mastery and meaning.

become active architects of their own jobs.

When asked about it, she said, “No, it’s not part of my job, but it’s part of me.”

The simplest way to start rethinking our options is to question what we do daily.

Codifying knowledge might help us track it, but it doesn’t necessarily lead us to open our minds.

A second dilemma is when to think again. Before making a decision, it’s worth considering two questions: how high are the stakes, and how reversible is it? If a choice is inconsequential, it makes sense to be decisive: the early bird gets the worm. If you’re about to walk through a revolving door, it’s fine to act quickly too: you can always rethink it later. But if the stakes are high and the door is going to lock behind you, it pays to do your rethinking up front. It really matters, and it won’t be so easy to undo.

overthinking is a problem, but underthinking is a bigger problem.

I’d rather see you embrace the discomfort of doubt than live with the regret of foolish conviction. For me, the difference between reflection and rumination is whether you’re still learning. If you’re pondering a familiar problem without gaining fresh insights, it’s time to seek new information or reach out to your challenge network.[*]

But in times of crisis as well as times of prosperity, what we need more is a leader who accepts uncertainty, acknowledges mistakes, learns from others, and rethinks plans.

Define your identity in terms of values, not opinions. It’s easier to avoid getting stuck to your past beliefs if you don’t become attached to them as part of your present self-concept. See yourself as someone who values curiosity, learning, mental flexibility, and searching for knowledge. As you form opinions, keep a list of factors that would change your mind.

To prevent overconfidence in your knowledge, reflect on how well you can explain a given subject.

Everyone knows more than you about something.

Build a challenge network, not just a support network. It’s helpful to have cheerleaders encouraging you, but you also need critics to challenge you. Who are your most thoughtful critics? Once you’ve identified them, invite them to question your thinking. To make sure they know you’re open to dissenting views, tell them why you respect their pushback—and where they usually add the most value.

To help people reevaluate, prompt them to consider how they’d believe different things if they’d been born at a different time or in a different place.

Admitting points of convergence doesn’t make you weaker—it shows that you’re willing to negotiate about what’s true, and it motivates the other side to consider your point of view.

Instead of diluting your argument, lead with a few of your strongest points.

I’m scheduling a weekly time for rethinking and unlearning. I reach out to my challenge network and ask what ideas and opinions they think I should be reconsidering. Recently, my wife, Allison, told me that I need to rethink the way I pronounce the word mayonnaise.