To spark insights, cultivate curiosity about things that don’t make sense, rather than dismissing anomalies. This curiosity helps in investigating further and challenging existing beliefs.
As an individual, maximize insights by adopting an ‘insight stance’ that embraces new and unexpected information with curiosity. Actively celebrate your own small insights and those of others, rather than only dwelling on mistakes, to increase sensitivity to them.
To improve performance, focus not only on reducing errors but also on increasing insights. Most organizations neglect the latter, which is crucial for growth.
To achieve mastery and break through performance plateaus, actively engage in unlearning. This involves identifying and letting go of flawed or limited conventions and beliefs that no longer serve broad applicability.
Seek out or value turbulent experiences in your career, as they provide a richer and more detailed learning surface area compared to smooth, low-stress periods. These challenges force adaptations, mistake identification, and recovery, accelerating expertise.
To break out of fixation errors, actively notice and explore anomalies that contradict your initial understanding. Avoid explaining away inconvenient data, as this leads to holding onto wrong impressions for too long.
Conduct a pre-mortem by imagining a project has failed in the future and then individually writing down all the reasons why. Share these reasons aloud, going around the room, to surface unforeseen flaws, diminish overconfidence, and foster a culture of candor and trust. Conclude by having each person write down personal actions to mitigate identified risks.
Adopt a mindset in any encounter, especially with civilians or lawbreakers, to aim for increased trust by the end of the interaction. This shift from ‘make them comply’ to ‘build their faith in me’ governs behavior to create greater trust and voluntary cooperation.
Use the Shadowbox method for decision training: go through challenging scenarios, pausing at decision points to rank options/goals/information and state reasons. Compare your choices and reasoning to those of experts, focusing on their detailed rationale to learn to see the world through their eyes.
Journaling decisions helps in reflection, distilling complex thoughts, and identifying gaps in understanding or areas for further information gathering. It also allows for reviewing past patterns in decision-making.
When creating a decision journal, record: the decision itself, primary and secondary goals, key information used, and affected people/teams. This provides a valuable record for later reflection on overlooked cues or goals.
To fast-track expertise for individuals with limited direct experience, provide vicarious experiences through stories or challenging scenarios. This allows them to learn from others’ crises and adaptations without having to live through them directly.
When learning from another person’s abstraction, ask for the stories behind it to overcome language limitations and miscommunication. Inquire about surprising events, what happened, why they were surprised, and how they made sense of it to gain a deeper understanding.
To tell an effective story, include an unexpected mystery that engages the listener and makes them want to know the outcome. The storyteller should enjoy telling stories, and the narrative should ultimately lead to an insight or transformation.
When faced with two nearly equally effective options (a ‘zone of indifference’), recognize that further deliberation is often unproductive. Pick one option, even by flipping a coin, and reallocate time to more fruitful endeavors.
Avoid common pre-mortem mistakes by framing it as ’the project has failed, explain why’ (not ‘what can go wrong’), ensuring rapid-fire contributions from each person, and having the leader actively participate first to foster trust.
Improve meeting effectiveness by changing what people signal as valuable, encouraging unique insights rather than regurgitating known information. Ask participants to contribute something valuable and uniquely insightful to the problem.
To generate more insights in group settings, have individuals independently and privately generate their ideas and concepts first, before sharing them with the larger group. This approach is more effective than collective brainstorming.
Before making a group decision, have each person individually write down their definition of the problem being solved. Comparing these statements will reveal variance and help ensure the group is addressing the actual problem.
Leaders should honestly and curiously query team members for their thoughts and differing perspectives, rather than just checking boxes. This approach genuinely seeks out diverse ideas and helps capture a richer understanding of the situation or goals.
In project review meetings for complex or ‘wicked’ problems, ask team members what has surprised them since the last meeting. A lack of surprises is a red flag, as examining unexpected events can reveal crucial insights and prompt necessary adjustments to the problem definition or goals.
Avoid consensus decision-making in high-stakes or dangerous environments, as it creates pressure to conform and can lead to suboptimal outcomes. Instead, use secret voting to allow individuals to express their true opinions without fear of repercussions.
There is no universal best approach for team decision-making; the most effective strategy depends entirely on the specific situation and context.
To improve decision-making in conflict situations, focus on structuring the environment to gain voluntary compliance rather than relying on intimidation. Study and adopt techniques used by ‘good strangers’ who are skilled at diffusing situations and creating benign environments.
To identify an expert, ask them about their last mistake. Experts are aware of and reflect on their mistakes, unlike competent but non-expert individuals who tend to forget them.
Organizations serious about fostering insights should implement a review mechanism for ideas rejected prematurely. This prevents good, but fragile, ideas from being discarded by a single person in the chain of command.
Rather than focusing on ‘de-biasing,’ understand that cognitive biases are often heuristics that are generally useful, even if not perfect. Recognize their strengths and how they derive from experience, rather than solely focusing on their failures in specific contexts.
For video-based Shadowbox training, watch a scenario, then rewatch it, pausing to highlight important cues and explain why. Compare your identified cues and reasoning with those of experts to learn their focus and thought processes.
Develop cognitive flexibility by avoiding rigid routines and embracing unexpected challenges. Cultivate a mindset where you are excited, rather than frustrated, when plans go awry, viewing it as an opportunity to improvise and invent new solutions.