The Hidden Power of Changing Your Mind

Just last week, at Animalz, I was delighted to be proven wrong. During a weekly operations meeting, our COO, Haley Bryant, probed into my thinking; she posed some great questions along the lines of “I know you’ve expressed concern about this idea in the past, but what would it look like if we tried it in this way? Are there any benefits to that approach?” Haley is an incredible leader and thought partner for many reasons; one characteristic I admire most is her curiosity. She asks questions in a way that invites discussion and thinking big.

I didn’t have an immediate reaction beyond a feeling of intrigue. I noodled on her questions for a while and subsequently brought them up with our strategist team, (incidentally, one of the smartest, most intellectually curious group of people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing). Thus ensured one of the most lively discussions we’d ever had, ideating about upsides, downsides, and strategies to mitigate the downsides. Haley’s questions had unblocked a whole line of thinking in me and the team, more broadly. 

This series of events demonstrated that my past stance showed flaws. I’d overlooked some major opportunities because I was so focused on validating the idea. Until that moment, I’d fallen victim to confirmation bias. Chatting with Haley later that same day, I couldn’t control my excitement about being wrong. Not only did this experience lead to a better idea, but dang, the process was fun! It sent me into a rabbit hole about the value of questioning assumptions and changing one’s mind.

Why Good Leaders Change Their Minds

Though “changing your mind” often has negative connotations, this moment underscored the value of a work culture where it’s ok to re-examine your beliefs. Too often in our society, we pit confidence and doubt against one another. We see a false dichotomy here, imagining that, if one is confident, one doesn’t doubt oneself or one’s ideas.

And yet, isn’t it an act of bravery to notice and surface flaws in your own thinking? Beyond bravery, as Adam Grant points out on the NFX podcast, there’s significant power in rethinking your assumptions. The best leaders adopt a mindset of “I’m not trying to prove myself, I’m trying to improve myself”. These leaders focus on seeking new information, as opposed to focusing on being right. 

Grant frames this as “scientist mode”, and it differs from preaching, prosecuting, and politicking. Most of us operate in all four modes, but some of us lean into certain ones more than others. (If you enjoy online quizzes, you might get a kick out of Grant’s “Think Again Quiz”, which seeks to uncover people’s primary modes of thinking.) 

The quiz has a nice summary of the four modes: “In our daily lives, we often think like preachers, prosecutors, politicians, and scientists. Psychologists find that we enter preacher mode when we're defending a sacred value, prosecutor mode when we're trying to win an argument, politician mode when we're campaigning for the approval of an audience, and scientist mode when we're searching for the truth. These mental modes affect our will to question our own opinions and our skill to open other people's minds.” Simply being aware of when we’re leaning into one mode or another might help a team make the best possible decisions.

Grant goes into detail on the “scientific” approach in his book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Leaders who demonstrate this scientific mindset tend to pivot more often and, subsequently, be more successful. Nota bene: it’s worth underscoring that “pivoting often” doesn’t mean changing your mind willy-nilly. Rather, scientists make a hypothesis, share their assumptions, and revisit the hypothesis when confronted with new information. Scientists “balance prudence and decisiveness”, rather than endlessly debating and refining an idea ad nauseum. (More on this below, as well as how to overcome this risk.)

So, besides pivoting, what’s the impact of a scientific mindset? In my humble opinion, it makes it easier for those around you to learn why and how you make decisions. But according to Grant, it leads to better business performance. Grant cites a study that shows the possible impact of scientific thinking. This greater willingness to pivot correlates with higher company revenues: 

(Image credit: Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, by Adam Grant)

Not only does re-thinking lead to greater business success, but it also leads to being right more often. “Superforecasters” (ie those who have an above-average track record of making correct predictions) change their minds twice as often as the rest of us. According to Tetlock and Gardner in their book, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, open-mindedness correlates with accuracy. They point out that “superforecasting demands thinking that is open-minded, careful, curious, and - above all - self-critical.”

So, how can we use these data points to shape our company and decision-making processes? Might we cultivate this scientific mindset in a business environment? There are likely countless strategies, but I want to share some specific examples from Animalz. We work hard to cultivate this approach, and I believe we succeed more than the average team.

How to Cultivate the Scientific Mindset through Three Lenses

Getting down to brass tacks, how do you cultivate this scientific mode in your team? Given that Organizational Behavior was always one of my favorite grad school subjects, I can’t help but want to look at this question through strategic, cultural, and political lenses. 

From a strategic perspective, we bake the scientific mindset into everything we do. For example, Haley and our incredible CEO, Devin Bramhall, help us focus on running our business by the numbers. Yes, we might have instincts about a problem or solution, but we try to be assiduous about checking these gut assumptions by running the numbers. At a more macro level, we cultivate this mindset when setting goals. Some of our biggest 2021 company OKRs focus on innovation and launching new products.

We also think deeply about the scientific mindset when it comes to our company culture. One of our company values at Animalz is curiosity. This value aligns nicely with our strategic focus on content marketing for SaaS companies. We work with some of the fastest-growing tech companies, many of whom are building cutting edge products never seen before. Our team members need to demonstrate curiosity in learning about new industries and products. Without this curiosity, we’d be incapable of telling our customers’ stories in an accurate and compelling way. 

But this emphasis on curiosity also encourages us to behave as scientists. It seeps into what we say and how we say it. Multiple times per day, I hear someone start a sentence with “How might we…” or “I wonder how we could…” Sadly, all too many tech companies have learned how to pay lip service to company values while not actually living them. It’s been revelatory to see how much we can accomplish on a team where our values and our behaviors are so closely aligned. 

Last, we think deeply about power structures at Animalz and how to build and leverage them for good. When someone brings a new idea to the table, we encourage the person to shop it around and invite feedback and buy-in. “Curiosity” also informs how we praise and promote people. We celebrate curiosity publicly when we give one another feedback on Slack, pointing to specific ways in which someone demonstrated curiosity in their work. We point out how a team member lives our values when announcing promotions.

What the Scientific Mindset Looks Like

Let’s get more specific now and focus on the tactics that can lead to a more scientifically-minded team. Here are a few examples of how curiosity and the scientific mindset play out on a day-to-day basis at Animalz:

• Transparency: Most of our (non-sensitive) communication at Animalz happens in public Slack channels. We do this intentionally, so that we can better understand one another’s thinking about a problem or opportunity. This transparency also invites curiosity: it’s easier to ask questions when you know what others are working on.
• Sharing ideas early and often: This is the guiding principle behind many of our systems and processes. For example, every piece of content we write goes through editing when a draft is 30% complete and when it’s 90% complete (as well as copyediting once the piece is finished). H/t to Jason Fried for his inspirational role in this approach. The formalization of our editing process invites input at the right moments. As a counterpoint, being slow to bring others into your thinking can lead to misalignment, frustration, and wasted work. One of my favorite leaders and former colleagues, Chris Savage, the CEO at Wistia, used to call this “Forrest Gumping”; you run serious risks when you run blindly in a direction without stopping to check if others are behind you.
• Clarifying how developed an idea is: The rapid growth at Animalz requires that we build and refine our processes constantly. The more people who offer feedback on what’s working and what isn’t, the better. We make this feedback loop easier by sharing how far along we are with our thinking. For example, if I told you that I was only 10% down the path with a new idea, you’d likely feel more comfortable giving honest feedback (especially if the idea sucks!) than if I were 90% of the way there. 
• Assuming best intentions: Despite my previous point, let’s admit that it can feel crummy to hear someone trash your idea, no matter how far along you are in your thinking. Nor does this feel good to the person giving feedback; it’s scary to point out flaws in an idea, especially if the idea came from someone more senior or tenured. We try to mitigate these challenges by always assuming best intentions. We make a habit of using the phrase “assume best intentions” often, which has helped it become a key part of our standard operating procedures.
• Building a “challenge network”: Grant describes the “challenge network” in Think Again as “a group of people we trust to point out our blind spots and help us overcome our weaknesses.” Getting unbiased people involved in an idea helps me avoid over-indexing on sunk costs. Ie I might feel reluctant to discard an idea if I’ve already sunk time into it. My challenge network, on the other hand, might be more comfortable doing so, thereby saving me from sinking even more energy into an idea that’s simply a dud. I feel immensely grateful to be surrounded with people who help sharpen and refine my ideas or even to refute them. As Grant points out, building your challenge network proactively helps you see others as coaches, rather than dissenters.
• Using RACI (or other responsibility frameworks): The RACI Matrix helps clarify roles and responsibilities, making processes more efficient and reducing strife and frustration. I also love it because it helps foster constructive conflict. People can more easily remain focused on the “task conflict” (ie “this person I’m consulting with pointed out a weak spot in my idea”) vs falling into the toxic realm of relationship conflict (ie “this person always challenges everything I say and wants to tear down my ideas again.”)

Again, there are so many wonderful ways of embracing this scientific mindset. These are but a few, but they’re ones I feel gratitude about daily. They make the work more fun, they make hard conversations feel less vulnerable, and they help make our ideas as strong as possible.

Focusing on our North Star

In my experience - working with and advising some of the coolest tech companies around - I’ve observed the leadership style of many CEOs. The least effective leaders are those who waffle so often and question ideas so deeply that momentum and motivation stagnate. Questioning must be balanced by focus and consistency.

Luckily for Animalz, the scientific mindset comes naturally to our CEO, Devin. Curiosity is part of her leadership DNA, but she balances it with consistency. Devin frequently cites her North Star: a desire to make Animalz THE best place for marketers to work and grow their careers. 

Devin is laser focused on this but flexible in her thinking about how we get there. So many different ingredients go into reaching this goal, some of which we might already understand, while others are yet to be uncovered. The only way we’re going to uncover them is by bringing others into the conversation, formulating ideas, and then pressure testing these ideas with the team.

In short, the best leaders come up with a vision, and they also ask questions. They recognize that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive. In fact, doing one piece well strengthens the other. It’s fun to see that, even years ago, Devin advocated for this delicate balancing act...an early indicator of the scientific, North Star-focused CEO she would become.