Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

by Adam Grant

  B. Approach Disagreements as Dances, Not Battles

  14. Acknowledge common ground. A debate is like a dance, not a war. Admitting points of convergence doesn’t make you weaker—it shows that you’re willing to negotiate about what’s true, and it motivates the other side to consider your point of view.

  15. Remember that less is often more. If you pile on too many different reasons to support your case, it can make your audiences defensive—and cause them to reject your entire argument based on its least compelling points. Instead of diluting your argument, lead with a few of your strongest points.

  16. Reinforce freedom of choice. Sometimes people resist not because they’re dismissing the argument but because they’re rejecting the feeling of their behavior being controlled. It helps to respect their autonomy by reminding them that it’s up to them to choose what they believe.

  17. Have a conversation about the conversation. If emotions are running hot, try redirecting the discussion to the process. Like the expert negotiators who comment on their feelings and test their understanding of the other side’s feelings, you can sometimes make progress by expressing your disappointment or frustration and asking people if they share it.

  III. COLLECTIVE RETHINKING

  A. Have More Nuanced Conversations

  18. Complexify contentious topics. There are more than two sides to every story. Instead of treating polarizing issues like two sides of a coin, look at them through the many lenses of a prism. Seeing the shades of gray can make us more open.

  19. Don’t shy away from caveats and contingencies. Acknowledging competing claims and conflicting results doesn’t sacrifice interest or credibility. It’s an effective way to engage audiences while encouraging them to stay curious.

  20. Expand your emotional range. You don’t have to eliminate frustration or even indignation to have a productive conversation. You just need to mix in a broader set of emotions along with them—you might try showing some curiosity or even admitting confusion or ambivalence.

  B. Teach Kids to Think Again

  21. Have a weekly myth-busting discussion at dinner. It’s easier to debunk false beliefs at an early age, and it’s a great way to teach kids to become comfortable with rethinking. Pick a different topic each week—one day it might be dinosaurs, the next it could be outer space—and rotate responsibility around the family for bringing a myth for discussion.

  22. Invite kids to do multiple drafts and seek feedback from others. Creating different versions of a drawing or a story can encourage kids to learn the value of revising their ideas. Getting input from others can also help them to continue evolving their standards. They might learn to embrace confusion—and to stop expecting perfection on the first try.

  23. Stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. They don’t have to define themselves in terms of a career. A single identity can close the door to alternatives. Instead of trying to narrow their options, help them broaden their possibilities. They don’t have to be one thing—they can do many things.

  C. Create Learning Organizations

  24. Abandon best practices. Best practices suggest that the ideal routines are already in place. If we want people to keep rethinking the way they work, we might be better off adopting process accountability and continually striving for better practices.

  25. Establish psychological safety. In learning cultures, people feel confident that they can question and challenge the status quo without being punished. Psychological safety often starts with leaders role-modeling humility.

  26. Keep a rethinking scorecard. Don’t evaluate decisions based only on the results; track how thoroughly different options are considered in the process. A bad process with a good outcome is luck. A good process with a bad outcome might be a smart experiment.

  D. Stay Open to Rethinking Your Future

  27. Throw out the ten-year plan. What interested you last year might bore you this year—and what confused you yesterday might become exciting tomorrow. Passions are developed, not just discovered. Planning just one step ahead can keep you open to rethinking.

  28. Rethink your actions, not just your surroundings. Chasing happiness can chase it away. Trading one set of circumstances for another isn’t always enough. Joy can wax and wane, but meaning is more likely to last. Building a sense of purpose often starts with taking actions to enhance your learning or your contribution to others.

  29. Schedule a life checkup. It’s easy to get caught in escalation of commitment to an unfulfilling path. Just as you schedule health checkups with your doctor, it’s worth having a life checkup on your calendar once or twice a year. It’s a way to assess how much you’re learning, how your beliefs and goals are evolving, and whether your next steps warrant some rethinking.

  30. Make time to think again. When I looked at my calendar, I noticed that it was mostly full of doing. I set a goal of spending an hour a day thinking and learning. Now I’ve decided to go further: I’m scheduling a weekly time for rethinking and unlearning. I reach out to my challenge network and ask what ideas and opinions they think I should be reconsidering. Recently, my wife, Allison, told me that I need to rethink the way I pronounce the word mayonnaise.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The expression of gratitude is something that probably needs less rethinking and more doing. I want to start by commending literary agent extraordinaire Richard Pine for inspiring me to rethink my audience and continue broadening my lens beyond work, and editor par excellence Rick Kot for believing in and developing the potential of these ideas. As always, it was a dream to work with the two of them, and they offered the ideal blend of challenge and support.

  The accuracy of this book was enhanced by the meticulous work of two professional fact-checkers. Paul Durbin applied his eagle eye to every sentence, working with remarkable thoroughness and alacrity. Andy Young carefully reviewed every page and followed up with a number of key sources.

  The content and tone of the book benefited immeasurably from the early readers in my challenge network. Marissa Shandell and Karren Knowlton were exceedingly generous in reading more chapter drafts than any human should endure and unfailingly brilliant in improving them. I cannot thank them enough for enriching every section of the book with leads on characters, suggestions on flow, and refinements on language. Marissa went the extra mile to enliven concepts and synthesize practical takeaways. Karren went above and beyond to amplify complexity and diversify thought.

  Reb Rebele, whose taste in ideas and prose is second to none, dished out the tough love that the early chapters needed and brought the seasoning that was missing from the denouements. Queen of signposting Grace Rubenstein offered sage guidance for helping readers see the forest in the trees and recognize thinking again as a habit that’s both timely and timeless. Dan O’Donnell helped me de-escalate my commitment to a series of dead ends and composed the written version of jaunty music to animate several key studies and stories.

  Lindsay Miller—the human equivalent of the corpus callosum—led the cheer for more conversational snippets and richer illustrations of how the preacher, prosecutor, politician, and scientist waltz into our psyches. Nicole Granet expanded my thinking around how rethinking is relevant to every domain of life. Sheryl Sandberg sharpened the structure by convincing me to introduce the core idea before the organizing framework, and underscoring the value of well-placed bookends. Constantinos Coutifaris made the vital point that I needed to explore when it’s persuasive to preach, prosecute, and politick. Natalia Villarman, Neal Stewart, and Will Fields shared their expertise on antiracism. Michael Choo motivated me to go back to the drawing board on a chapter that wasn’t working. Justin Berg lent his creative forecasting skills to select and develop my most novel and useful insights, and also introduced me to the satisfaction of reverse alliteration (where sequential words share a last letter or syllable). Susan Grant, ever the English teach
er, corrected grammar, caught typos, and fought with me about the Oxford comma. Sorry, Mom, that’s one thing I don’t plan to rethink.

  Impact Lab reminded me once again how much teachers can learn from students. Vanessa Wanyandeh challenged me to consider how power imbalances affect which groups should be doing the majority of the rethinking and highlight whose responsibility it is to fight prejudice. Akash Pulluru fearlessly obliterated weak arguments and debated the principles of good debate. Graelin Mandel called for more information about when and why task conflict causes relationship conflict, and Zach Sweeney made a passionate case for expanding the role of the rethinking cycle. Jordan Lei pushed me to delve more deeply into the first-instinct fallacy, and Shane Goldstein took the lead in talking me out of the blank-page epilogue and into showing some edits and margin notes. Nicholas Strauch requested more context on how to ask good questions and defended the frog, and Madeline Fagen suggested more clarity on the distinction between beliefs and values. Wendy Lee advised me to go into more detail on expressing confident humility, Kenny Hoang suggested I demonstrate some of the interpersonal rethinking principles in my writing, and Lizzie Youshaei called for more analysis of when and why people are open to being wrong. Meg Sreenivas pointed out extraneous details, Aaron Kahane clarified confusing arguments, and Shaheel Mitra suggested the Edgar Mitchell quote.

  I was lucky to have the support of top-notch teams at InkWell (shout-out to Alexis Hurley, Nathaniel Jacks, and Eliza Rothstein) and Viking (a group of people whose curiosity I miss every week I’m not writing or launching a book). Special thanks to Carolyn Coleburn, Whitney Peeling, Lindsay Prevette, and Bel Banta for their publicity prowess; Kate Stark, Lydia Hirt, and Mary Stone for their creative marketing; Tricia Conley, Tess Espinoza, Bruce Giffords, and Fabiana Van Arsdell for their editorial and production expertise; Jason Ramirez for art direction; Camille LeBlanc for wrangling; and Brian Tart, Andrea Schulz, Madeline McIntosh, Allison Dobson, and speed demon Markus Dohle for their ongoing support. Also, it was a delight to collaborate with Matt Shirley on the charts. Along with lending his characteristic cleverness and humor, he showed impressive patience in working to make sure they fit the content and tone of the book.

  A number of colleagues contributed to this book through conversations. As always, Dan Pink gave excellent input on framing the idea and tips on relevant research. My colleagues at Wharton—especially Rachel Arnett, Sigal Barsade, Drew Carton, Stephanie Creary, Angela Duckworth, Cade Massey, Samir Nurmohamed, and Nancy Rothbard—modeled many of the principles in the book and led me to think again about many of the points I was making. I am also grateful to Phil Tetlock for the preacher-prosecutor-politician framework and referrals to Kjirste Morrell and Jean-Pierre Beugoms; Eva Chen, Terry Murray, and Phil Rescober for the analysis of Jean-Pierre’s forecasts; Bob Sutton for putting Brad Bird on my radar and analyzing his Incredibles leadership so perceptively, as well as Jamie Woolf and Chris Wiggum for opening the Pixar door; Karl Weick for introducing me to Mann Gulch; Shannon Sedgwick Davis and Laren Poole for putting me in touch with Betty Bigombe and sharing background on her story; Jeff Ashby and Mike Bloomfield for the referrals to Chris Hansen and Ellen Ochoa; Eoghan Sheehy for the connection to Harish Natarajan; and Douglas Archibald for recommending Ron Berger (props to Noah Devereaux and the Strive Challenge for that serendipitous conversation). Early on, Eric Best showed me how rethinking could help people raise the bar, and Brian Little, Jane Dutton, Richard Hackman, and Sue Ashford taught me to see rethinking as one of the great joys of being an organizational psychologist.

  Every day, being a parent shows me that we all have the innate capacity to change our minds. As I finished writing this book during the pandemic, Henry wondered if the water supply might be affected and was eager to rethink where we get running water (Is there a tube that connects the ocean to our house? We might get an octopus!). When I asked how she convinces me to rethink things, Elena opened my eyes to a persuasion technique I had completely overlooked (Puppy dog eyes! Works every time!). When we were considering various optical illusions for the jacket of this book, Joanna came up with a better idea (What about a candle with a flame that’s water instead of fire?). I came away rethinking where creative ideas come from: if our twelve-year-old can come up with the perfect image for my book jacket, what else can kids do? I love how happily and effortlessly our children think again—and how they coax me to do it more often, too.

  My deep gratitude goes to Allison Sweet Grant for her love, advice, and humor every step of the way. As always, she helped me rethink many of my assumptions and put up with countless trivial questions, random requests, and unnecessary debates. I still pronounce it man-aze, not may-o-naze, but she makes a compelling point that no one says “Please pass the man”; it’s “Please pass the mayo.” For the record, I don’t even like mayonnaise.

  NOTES

  Prologue

  The smarter you are: Frank L. Schmidt and John Hunter, “General Mental Ability in the World of Work: Occupational Attainment and Job Performance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86 (2004): 162–73.

  the faster you can solve them: David C. Geary, “Efficiency of Mitochondrial Functioning as the Fundamental Biological Mechanism of General Intelligence (G),” Psychological Review 15 (2018): 1028–50.

  the ability to think and learn: Neel Burton, “What Is Intelligence?,” Psychology Today, November 28, 2018, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201811/what-is-intelligence; Charles Stangor and Jennifer Walinga, Introduction to Psychology (Victoria, BC: BCcampus, 2014); Frank L. Schmidt, “The Role of Cognitive Ability and Job Performance: Why There Cannot Be a Debate,” Human Performance 15 (2002): 187–210.

  “exercise great caution if you decide to change”: A Systematic Approach to the GRE (New York: Kaplan, 1999).

  the majority of answer revisions: Ludy T. Benjamin Jr., Timothy A. Cavell, and William R. Shallenberger III, “Staying with Initial Answers on Objective Tests: Is It a Myth?,” Teaching of Psychology 11 (1984): 133–41.

  counted eraser marks: Justin Kruger, Derrick Wirtz, and Dale T. Miller, “Counterfactual Thinking and the First Instinct Fallacy,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88 (2005): 725–35.

  those who do rethink their first answers: Yongnam Kim, “Apples to Oranges: Causal Effects of Answer Changing in Multiple-Choice Exams,” arXiv:1808.10577v4, last revised October 14, 2019, arxiv.org/abs/1808.10577.

  considering whether you should change it: Justin J. Couchman et al., “The Instinct Fallacy: The Metacognition of Answering and Revising during College Exams,” Metacognition and Learning 11 (2016): 171–85.

  The speaker taught them: Charles M. Slem, “The Effects of an Educational Intervention on Answer Changing Behavior,” Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, August 1985, eric.ed.gov/?id=ED266395.

  we’re mental misers: Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor, Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Sage, 2013).

  seizing and freezing: Arie W. Kruglanski and Donna M. Webster, “Motivated Closing of the Mind: ‘Seizing’ and ‘Freezing,’” Psychological Review 103 (1996): 263–83.

  better off in the slow-boiling pot: James Fallows, “The Boiled-Frog Myth: Stop the Lying Now!,” The Atlantic, September 16, 2006, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2006/09/the-boiled-frog-myth-stop-the-lying-now/7446/.

  “On a big fire”: Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire, 25th anniversary ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017); see also www.nifc.gov/safety/mann_gulch/event_timeline/event6.htm.

  Under acute stress, people typically revert: Barry M. Staw, Lance E. Sandelands, and Jane E. Dutton, “Threat Rigidity Effects in Organizational Behavior: A Multilevel Analysis,” Administrative Science Quarterly 26 (1981): 501–24; Karl E. Weick, “The Collapse of SenseMaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster,” Administrative Science Quarterly 38 (1993): 628–52.

  twen
ty-three wildland firefighters perished: Ted Putnam, “Findings from the Wildland Firefighters Human Factors Workshop,” United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Technology & Development Program, November 1995.

  Storm King Mountain: John N. Maclean, Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire (New York: HarperPerennial, 2009).

  could have moved 15 to 20 percent faster: Ted Putnam, “Analysis of Escape Efforts and Personal Protective Equipment on the South Canyon Fire,” Wildfire 4 (1995): 34–39.

  “Most would have lived”: Ted Putnam, “The Collapse of Decision Making and Organizational Structure on Storm King Mountain,” Wildfire 4 (1995): 40–45.

  “dropped their packs”: Report of the South Canyon Fire Accident Investigation Team, August 17, 1994.

  “Without my tools, who am I?”: Karl E. Weick, “Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational Studies,” Administrative Science Quarterly 41 (1996): 301–13.

  in an “e-group”: Elizabeth Widdicombe, “Prefrosh E-group Connected Class of ’03,” Harvard Crimson, June 5, 2003, www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/6/5/prefrosh-e-group-connected-class-of-03; Scott A. Golder, “Re: ‘Alone in Annenberg? First-Years Take Heart,’” Harvard Crimson, September 17, 1999, www.thecrimson.com/article/1999/9/17/letters-begroup-an-important-link-connecting.

  support for the Black Lives Matter movement: Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy, “How Public Opinion Has Moved on Black Lives Matter,” New York Times, June 10, 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html.