Inc | Adam Grant: Why the Best Leaders Love Being Wrong Adam Grant’s book Think Again is a masterpiece on rethinking or as Adam defines it the power of knowing what you don’t know. And in the age of an accelerating pace of change and increasing information, knowing what we don’t know and questioning our beliefs as well as understanding that we all are imperfect and have cognitive biases is increasingly important. He gives an example of BlackBerry vs Apple, and their respective CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Steve Jobs. Both CEOs were had made very good bets on the BlackBerry and the iPod, however, Steve had also rethought his decision about the smartphone market and decided to let Apple build the iPhone with the touchscreen - essentially an entirely new smartphone category, whereas Mike stayed stubborn and didn’t want to experiment with building a new category - the smartphone as he was happy with the BlackBerry and assumed that his customers would prefer a keyboard as well. When Mike wanted to finally change his mind, it was too late as his entire firm had believed that building a smartphone was a dumb idea. Meanwhile, Apple had captured a quarter of the global smartphone marketshare in 2012. I think rethinking is important not only because we should remain open to new ideas and perspectives, but also is necessary because in a world of accelerating change, the cost of not listening and being open-minded is very costly. It could be the difference between deciding to take big leaps in innovation, and surviving in business vs staying comfortable and getting crushed as in the case of Apple vs BlackBerry. We all have lots of cognitive biases, even the best of us, and that is also why its critical to rethink and to constantly listen, learn and challenge our own thinking, biases and preconceived notions, because we may be wrong, and our decisions which stem from our thinking may cost us.
Think Again by Adam Grant
Think Again by Adam Grant
Think Again by Adam Grant
Inc | Adam Grant: Why the Best Leaders Love Being Wrong Adam Grant’s book Think Again is a masterpiece on rethinking or as Adam defines it the power of knowing what you don’t know. And in the age of an accelerating pace of change and increasing information, knowing what we don’t know and questioning our beliefs as well as understanding that we all are imperfect and have cognitive biases is increasingly important. He gives an example of BlackBerry vs Apple, and their respective CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Steve Jobs. Both CEOs were had made very good bets on the BlackBerry and the iPod, however, Steve had also rethought his decision about the smartphone market and decided to let Apple build the iPhone with the touchscreen - essentially an entirely new smartphone category, whereas Mike stayed stubborn and didn’t want to experiment with building a new category - the smartphone as he was happy with the BlackBerry and assumed that his customers would prefer a keyboard as well. When Mike wanted to finally change his mind, it was too late as his entire firm had believed that building a smartphone was a dumb idea. Meanwhile, Apple had captured a quarter of the global smartphone marketshare in 2012. I think rethinking is important not only because we should remain open to new ideas and perspectives, but also is necessary because in a world of accelerating change, the cost of not listening and being open-minded is very costly. It could be the difference between deciding to take big leaps in innovation, and surviving in business vs staying comfortable and getting crushed as in the case of Apple vs BlackBerry. We all have lots of cognitive biases, even the best of us, and that is also why its critical to rethink and to constantly listen, learn and challenge our own thinking, biases and preconceived notions, because we may be wrong, and our decisions which stem from our thinking may cost us.