When I was walking around in Auchan looking for a 1-kg chicken wing to cook this week, a mind of buying a book came in. In the booksection, I found a compelling title “Think Again, The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know”. Do I buy it based on the first sight or do I need to rethink?
I ended up checking this book out at the counter. This book basically tell the reader on how we need to have a flexibility in mind and questioning our own beliefs. A story of 2 tech CEOs commences this book, Mike Lazaridis of BlackBerry and Steve Jobs (you know whose CEO he is). Following the raise of BlackBerry in 2010s, Mike believed that BB is a perfect product and surely didn’t need any changes. Although, the trend of touch screen was climbing at that time, Mike persisted that keyboard technology installed in BB has no flaws in prospecting the future. Nothing can change his mind. That was too late for him to recognize when the smartphone with touch screen tech has finally seized the market and the BB market has been plummeted. He failed to see and rethink another possibility.
The opposite story happened to Steve Jobs who was in the beginning also ignorance of developing an iPhone. He insisted to sell iPod instead of producing a phone. His employees at Apple tried to convince him to about this idea. They said that the idea is no other than adding more features on iPod, over only playing music, in packaging of a phone. Eventually, Steve was willing to adapt his mind towards this idea and the rest is great history for iPhone.
Those couple of story upon questioning or rethinking the own beliefs or proposition are on CEO level. But the same things can happen pretty much in simpler cases. In this book, the author Adam Grant, label the mind modes into multiple professions. As a disclaimer, there is no intention to insult any jobs mentioned below and make generalization, just as referred by the book. First, at some occasion people can be a preacher. When people think they are right, their mind will act like a preacher who deliver their theory as an absolute truth or there is no possibility of another truth. Therefore, they won’t do the rethinking. Next, people tend to be a prosecutor when they think others are wrong. The prosecutor will somehow find flaws of anyone who aren’t in line to their ideas. Same as the first, prosecutors don’t introspect their own believe, whatever they do is just to blame others. Third, everyone can turn into politician mode, who try to influence others that their ideas are correct. They put some efforts to make people believe the same way they do. Again, this mode of thinking doesn’t bother to rethink.
So, the author suggest anyone to think like a scientist, who is able to doubt their own beliefs, constantly aware of our understanding’s limitations, be curious about what we don’t know, and update views based on new data. Don’t get this wrong, being a scientist is not necessary about profession, it is a frame of mind that anyone can be. This way of thinking can guide us not falling into biases and realizes that we might have a blindspot of our own beliefs.
MW
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