Think Again Quotes

“A bad process with a good outcome is luck. A good process with a bad outcome might be a smart experiment.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“rethinking the orthodoxy.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“(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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“It isn’t until a high-stakes decision goes horribly wrong that people pause to reexamine their practices.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“binary bias. It’s a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“motivational interviewing has a statistically and clinically meaningful effect on behavior change in roughly three out of four studies, and psychologists and physicians using it have a success rate of four in five. There aren’t many practical theories in the behavioral sciences with a body of evidence this robust.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“When my students talk about the evolution of self-esteem in their careers, the progression often goes something like this: Phase 1: I’m not important Phase 2: I’m important Phase 3: I want to contribute to something important I’ve noticed that the sooner they get to phase 3, the more impact they have and the more happiness they experience”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“While enjoyment waxes and wanes, meaning tends to last.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“There’s even evidence that placing a great deal of importance on happiness is a risk factor for depression. Why? One possibility is that when we’re searching for happiness, we get too busy evaluating life to actually experience it. Instead of savoring our moments of joy, we ruminate about why our lives aren’t more joyful. A second likely culprit is that 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. A third potential factor is that when we hunt for happiness, we overemphasize pleasure at the expense of purpose.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Requiring proof is an enemy of progress. This is why companies like Amazon use a principle of disagree and commit. As Jeff Bezos explained it in an annual shareholder letter, instead of demanding convincing results, experiments start with asking people to make bets. “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it?” The goal in a learning culture is to welcome these kinds of experiments, to make rethinking so familiar that it becomes routine.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“One of the most effective steps toward process accountability that I’ve seen is at Amazon, where important decisions aren’t made based on simple PowerPoint presentations. They’re informed by a six-page memo that lays out a problem, the different approaches that have been considered in the past, and how the proposed solutions serve the customer. At the start of the meeting, to avoid groupthink, everyone reads the memo silently.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“She was surprised to find that the more psychological safety a team felt, the higher its error rates. It appeared that psychological safety could breed complacency. When trust runs deep in a team, people might not feel the need to question their colleagues or double-check their own work. But Edmondson soon recognized a major limitation of the data: the errors were all self-reported. To get an unbiased measure of mistakes, she sent a covert observer into the units. When she analyzed those data, the results flipped: 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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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. Evidence shows that in learning cultures, organizations innovate more and make fewer mistakes.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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.*”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Disagreeable people tend to be more critical, skeptical, and challenging—and they’re more likely than their peers to become engineers and lawyers. They’re not just comfortable with conflict; it energizes them.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In psychology, counterfactual thinking involves imagining how the circumstances of our lives could have unfolded differently. When we realize how easily we could have held different stereotypes, we might be more willing to update our views.* To activate counterfactual thinking, you might ask people questions like: How would your stereotypes be different if you’d been born Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American? What opinions would you hold if you’d been raised on a farm versus in a city, or in a culture on the other side of the world? What beliefs would you cling to if you lived in the 1700s? You’ve already learned from debate champions and expert negotiators that asking people questions can motivate them to rethink their conclusions. What’s different about these kinds of counterfactual questions is that they invite people to explore the origins of their own beliefs—and reconsider their stances toward other groups. 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.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“For a long time, I believed that we learn more when we’re having fun. This research convinced me I was wrong.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In the physics experiment, the students took tests to gauge how much they had learned about statics and fluids. Despite enjoying the lectures more, they actually gained more knowledge and skill from the active-learning session. It required more mental effort, which made it less fun but led to deeper understanding.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“I expected active learning to win the day, but the data suggest that you and your roommate will both enjoy the subject more when it’s delivered by lecture.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“It turns out that even if we disagree strongly with someone on a social issue, when we discover that she cares deeply about the issue, we trust her more. We might still dislike her, but we see her passion for a principle as a sign of integrity. We reject the belief but grow to respect the person behind it.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“If we don’t understand someone, we can’t have a eureka moment by imagining his perspective.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“I sometimes shied away from discussing mixed results because I didn’t want to leave readers confused. Research suggests that many writers fall into the same trap, caught up in trying to “maintain a consistent narrative rather than an accurate record.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“We can also convey complexity by highlighting contingencies. Every empirical finding raises unanswered questions about when and where results will be replicated, nullified, or reversed. Contingencies are all the places and populations where an effect may change.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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. It’s rare that a single study or even a series of studies is conclusive.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know