Thinking is easy and natural but rethinking… another story

I would be unfair if I did not start this review by talking a little bit about Adam Grant.

He is an American psychologist, who specializes in organizational psychology. He has written mind-blowing books such as Originals (super recommended) and Give and Take (pending to read) and my latest addition; Think Again. He has been teaching at Wharton for +13 years and he is a Ted Talk speaker and finally he helped me overcome a huge challenge in my last job by just answering a question.

I was working at PepsiCo as part of a talent management program called Young Talent ExCom (YTE). This program was basically a group of under 30-years old PepsiCo ‘collaborators that were supposed to propose innovative and disruptive ideas for the whole company to try out and transform.

During our 2-year program, we presented a list of +100 ideas that were meant to change the company. I had very interesting experiences during this time but the one that I will remember forever was meeting Adam Grant. Not only because of who he is but because of what he did.

One of the top ideas around our list was “No Meeting days” Around that time everyone was exhausted and done with meetings. The pandemic forced everyone to work from home and people lost the sensibility of what should have been a meeting and what should not. We were pushing this initiative more than any other because of the low complexity and high benefits. “No meeting Wednesday” sounds easy to implement right? Now imagine going against the tide in order to implement this for a +40,000 employees ‘company, afraid of doing things differently. IMPOSSIBLE. Every time we were about to launch, something happened, it was not ready, someone was afraid of misunderstandings or some other excuses, but the truth is that we were not able to think again as a company nor as a leadership group.

During Adam′s lecture we realized that what was missing for the idea to launch was validation and credibility, something Adam could gave to us. We decided posting a straight-forward question live in the Q&A section seen by +1,000 executives. The question was something like: “We want to implement No Meeting Wednesdays”, should we wait to be ready, or should we just do it fast and immediately?”. ?The question was so simple to his eyes that he just picked it up and answered, “Just do it ASAP and test it”. Minutes later, we were planning the go live for next week after Adam′s answer.

Why am I sharing this? First because I wanted to share a personal experience with him, second was that thinking again does not always depend entirely on yourself, and you sometimes need Adam Grant′s support or someone else’s.

Moving forward with the book, it is so good. I think these books are 10% on the topic, 40% on the investigation and 50% on the narrative. If you enjoy a mix between personal anecdotes, public studies and eventual jokes, you should read not only Think Again but every Adam Grant published work.

The book is filled with true stories about thinking again, from the Wright brothers until Melinda and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos at Amazon. How people are so used to defend their POVs that we forget we live in a life changing environment and if we are not ready to unlearn and rethink, we are just outdated and not ready for the future.

Adam achieves readers to start rethinking how they ideate, work, communicate and every other process that requires thinking (everything actually). He quotes several studies around psychology that amazed me, such as Mountain Stupid (a place where I have been several times) or the Dunning-Kruger effect which is having high confidence but low competence. He does not only point out this kind of situations or problems, but he shares possible solutions and advice around rethinking such as having Confident Humility and what it means, or a 3-step process to fight the impostor syndrome which ends with a very interesting quote: “Learning requires the humility to realize we have something to learn” among others. He also covers simple stuff; he shares very easy ways to starting rethinking conversations such as asking, “Can we debate about XXX?”. He basically does everything in this 300-page book.

Some topics that I liked the most where about stuff that I 100% related to, for example, debate. He demystifies it as just discussing something and defending your ideals and thoughts but an empathy process, a way of understanding someone else′s POV and giving your mind the chance to rethink even your most deep ideals. This chapter for example, was very eye-opening for me. I have been told “You debate for the sake of discussing” several times and by very close persons and I realized that this is unhealthy and not-nurturing for the rethinking process.

Finally, he covers a whole chapter around 2 very important concepts for a business owner and entrepreneur: psychological safety and process accountability. Amy Edmonson summarizes their relation around learning: as following “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”. These concepts are a most in every single company and people should know about them in order to foster successful and healthy culture.

My last and most valuable lesson throughout the book is the fact that thinking again, or rethinking is not only a process for individuals, but also a process that people should teach and learn from others. When we rethink anything, we are inviting people around us to do the same and when we do this, we start a virtuous circle of allowing our minds to questioning our beliefs. I am pretty sure that if we increased rethinking around the world, lots of paradigms, enmities and taboos could just solve and evolve for better debating and coexisting.

My favorite quote through the book was:

"Arrogance is ignorance with conviction"