Favourite Books: Rebel Ideas

Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking

By: Matthew Syed

320 pp. | John Murray Press | Published 2019

Some books leave a mark on readers' lives. Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking is one of them for me.

I spotted the catchy front cover of the book at an airport bookshop at the end of 2019 and started reading the first page. I was immersed in the story about how CIA failed to spot the signs of the decade long building up plot of 9/11 terrorist attack. Chiefly, due to lack of diversity in the agency. How individually brilliant, patriotic and very passionate CIA agents were let down. Only by the organisation's failure to make them efficient as a group. I was already halfway through the book when the flight landed at my destination.

In each chapter of the book, Sunday Times bestselling author Matthew Syed prepares the ground with snippets of famous stories from different times and locations. Heading slowly towards the end he wraps all these stories up in the topic with his brilliant storytelling mastery. He keeps readers captivated with his articulation and brings a message about diverse thinking in such a way that readers are surprised even with the known end of the story.

Using anecdotes and references of research, the book insists that not having diversity in teams, organisations, decision-making bodies, and even in the society, lets us all down and leaves us all worse off. For solutions to complex problems, diversity is not just for diversity's sake or a box-ticking exercise; it is imperative and must-have.

Ten individuals of the same background and experiences can provide ten different solutions to a problem. But technically, this would be just one idea, a consequence of homogeneity of the team. Conversely, solutions emanating from a team comprised of ten different people will have a much bigger pool of ideas to tackle the issue at hand.

The book also contains success stories where dream teams pulled through missions impossible just because they were cognitively diverse and hierarchically flatter. You'll also come across sad and sometimes fatal failures due to the opposite, like the 1996 Everest expedition that ended in disaster, also depicted in the 2015 Hollywood blockbuster.

One sensational example in the book is of legendary Alan Turing’s team, the Enigma code breakers of Bletchley Park. The team consisted of men and women who were mathematicians, chess players, crossword solvers, linguists, Egyptologists, and scholars. They were brought together by visionary leaders who realised that a complex task like breaking an unbreakable machine code couldn’t be achieved by just brilliant mathematicians alone. Different people who could cross-pollinate ideas and have a creative approach to problem-solving can give a fighting chance in volatile, ever changing conditions like that. Turing, a gay man when homosexuality was a criminal offense, with his rebel team was able to shorten the deadly war for 3 years, saving millions of lives and nudging the wheel of history.

This is the power of diversity. In the current ever-changing volatile day and age, more than ever, a collective approach to challenges is needed. This approach must be powered by the difference of opinions and widest cognitive pool possible.

Audio book is narrated by author himself. If you are fan of author's award winning podcast, like me, you would surely enjoy that too. Highly recommended.