Think Again The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. This is another brilliant book from Adam Grant.

The core message of this book is to think like a scientist. Always seeking new information, challenging existing beliefs including your own, running experiments to test your hypotheses and being a lifelong learner.

Adam explains the concepts and then shows us how to apply these rethinking principles to all walks of life. From dealing with prejudices, education, organisational behaviour, listening and questioning, career planning, dealing with conflict and disagreements and avoiding overconfidence. And a few more. As usual Adam combines incredible rigour of studies ( meta analyses ) with practical tips. Most books have a few good chapters and some ordinary ones. But every chapter in this book is worth learning from.

Adam discusses a lot of familiar concepts like psychological safety or listening well. There’s nothing new about them. It’s how these concepts reconcile and fit with the scientist and rethink framework which is interesting and nicely explained.

At the end of this book you will value humility, self doubt, curiosity, being proven wrong, healthy debate, complexity and nuance and the value of experiments.

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

Discover how rethinking can lead to excellence at work and wisdom in life

Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world it might matter more that we can rethink and unlearn.

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds-and our own. As Wharton's top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he tries to argue like he's right but listen like he's wrong.

Think Again invites us to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility, humility, and curiosity over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom.

My favourite line from the book.

If knowledge is power, knowing what you don’t know is wisdom.

There is a incredible amount of good stuff in this book. That's why I'm recommending this awesome book.

Some Glimps of Think again: the power of knowing what you don't know.

didn't know and urged him to doubt his convictions. It might be possible, they argued, to build a smartphone that everyone would love using-and to get the carriers to do it Apple's way.

Research shows that when people are resistant to change, it helps to reinforce what will stay the same. Visions for change are more compel-ling when they include visions of continuity. Although our strategy might evolve, our identity will endure. 

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

-CHARLES DARWIN

In theory, confidence and competence go hand in hand. In practice, they often diverge. You can see it when people rate their own leadership skills and are also evaluated by their colleagues, supervisors, or subordi-nates. In a meta-analysis of ninety-five studies involving over a hundred

thousand people, women typically underestimated their leadership skills, while men overestimated their skills.

You've probably met some football fans who are convinced they know more than the coaches on the sidelines. That's the armchair quarterback syndrome, where confidence exceeds competence. Even after calling financial plays that destroyed an economy, Davíð Oddsson still refused to acknowledge that he wasn't qualified to coach—let alone quarterback.

He was blind to his weaknesses.

The opposite of armchair quarterback syndrome is impostor syndrome, where competence exceeds confidence.

Think again, is a book that obviously reinforces the importance of rethinking, and highlights the perils of not revisiting one’s ideas and offers advice on methods, tools, and networks that would facilitate rethinking.

It also REMINDS me of certain biases, habits, and fallacies that one fall for, if not being made conscious from time to time.

Consider the following:

1. Do you want your opinions and knowledge to be made right, or wish (hence claim) that they are right?

2. Do you wear an advocate and politician or scientist hat when looking at a situation?

3. Being competent and being confident are dependent or independent variables? If there is a causal relation, than what is the direction?

4. Asking HOW helps reveal to the overconfident, his depth/shallowness of knowledge and need to know more?

5. Only the secure identity harness the benefit of doubt, Can you?

6. Is your opinion being proven wrong a question about hurt self-identity or joyous occasion of less wrong in future?

7. Is the team encountering relationship conflicts or tasks conflict?

8. Are you able to keep with the challengers because they care, and weed out insecure criticizers?

9. Are your disagreements leading to debate or dispute?

10. The more important the matter, do you rely on presenting more arguments in favour of your side, or few important ones, but explained at length?

11. To solicit feedback, do u use the rating scale to peg response and seek ways to improve the score?

12. Do u assume or ask what kind of evidence will allow others to open their position for a rethink?

13. Stereotypes are rarely questioned by giving counter-evidence but often by asking how do you know? And what would it take to verify?

14. Do u motivate someone to change or nudge someone to think of their own reason to change?

15. Do u base your motivational speech on assumptions, or actually listen through motivational interviewing?

16. Attending lectures are enjoyable to experience, but does that translate into effective learning? Would active learning help you get better grades?

17. How often do u present material that is open to iteration, refinement, and multiple feedbacks to come to better shape? Do u teach the patience to invite suggestions or embrace criticism?

18. How do u marry psychological safety with accountability for results?

19. Psychological safe teams make more errors or reveal more errors?

20. How can u differentiate perseverance vs stubbornness in your stand?

You may be sure of the response to some of them, but in the spirit of think again, do validate with your critiques or take the easy route of checking with Adam!