Insight
Organizations should shift to process accountability to encourage thoughtful decision-making
“What a lot of the research on this suggests is that we want to shift to process accountability, not just outcome accountability, and ask people to really think seriously about, okay, how would I know that this is a thorough and thoughtful decision process as o…”
Insight
Comparing candidates to each other instead of predefined criteria ruins hiring
“Most basic mistake that people make in these kinds of decisions is they don't consider criteria before looking at candidates, right? So they interview their three people, and they start to compare them, as opposed to saying, no, I should have an independent st…”
Assertion Supported
Holistic single-interviewer evaluations trigger confirmation bias and desirability bias
“We know that it's better to go up to three or four empirically. In too many cases also it's each interviewer's job to make an overall assessment of the candidate, which makes it too easy to decide you like someone, and then confirmation bias and desirability b…”
Insight
Pro sports teams assess under ten attributes despite hundreds driving performance
“I I've worked with a whole bunch of professional sports teams over the past few years on this exact problem. And they're at best assessing on, you know, maybe seven or eight attributes when there might be 200 that are going to drive people's future performance…”
Insight
Psychological safety means trusting you won't be punished for challenging beliefs
“Psychological safety is knowing that other people are going to treat you with respect and trusting that if you go out on a limb and say something uncomfortable or challenge a deep-seated belief, that you are not going to be punished for that.”
Insight
Preaching and prosecuting freeze beliefs while politicking merely appeases tribes
“The danger of preaching and prosecuting is that you don't change your mind. You're right. Everyone else is wrong. And so you might be very motivated to get other people to rethink, but your views are frozen. They're set in stone. And politicking is interesting…”
Insight
Treating personal views as hypotheses increases mental flexibility and truth-seeking
“And so I think we could all get better at thinking more like scientists to say, you know what? Your views, they're actually just theories, right? You could kind of make them into hypotheses, and then you could run little experiments in your life to figure out …”
Insight
Asking 'how' instead of 'why' exposes the illusion of explanatory depth
“What tend to be more effective are how questions, where instead of asking, why do you believe this? You ask, how would you implement this? Or how would that idea work if we were to come to some agreement on it? And that, that cultivates intellectual humility, …”
Insight
Asking for proof criteria grounds disagreements in agreed-upon methodology
“It refocuses the conversation in the realm of evidence as opposed to just opinion, right? And so when I ask them to tell me what a well-designed study is going to look like, we can then agree on what valid methods are, and once I tell them what the findings ar…”
Insight
Overwhelming people with airtight logic deprives them of owning their choices
“I had overwhelmed her with rational arguments, and she didn't agree, but she couldn't fight back. And my first reaction, Shane, was, yes! Because I thought that was my job as a social scientist, right? I want to come with airtight logic and rigorous data and m…”
Insight
The most creative people start projects quickly but finish them slowly
“The most creative people are not the procrastinators like me who dive right in or the procrastinators who wait till the last minute. They're the people who are quick to start, but slow to finish somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.”
Insight
Organizations overvalue fast thinkers at the expense of slow, deep thinkers
“I worry a lot that we spend too much time listening to people who think fast and shallow, and not enough time hearing people who think slow and deep, and I think we want to become the people who think slow and deep, because that's where most of our good rethin…”
Insight
Voicing opinions aloud incurs a responsibility to remain open to changing them
“If you keep your opinion to yourself, if you decide to say it out loud, then I think you have a responsibility to be open to changing your mind in the face of better logic or stronger data. And so I think if you're willing to voice an opinion, you should also …”
Insight
Grant: Experts must write long summaries before distilling core insights
“I often find I have to write a longer summary of a study before
Like before I really start to distill what the core aha is or, you know, why I care about it. And that's especially true for the areas that I know really well.”
Insight
Grant: Givers Should Avoid Being Givers Toward Takers
“Like if you're a giver, don't be a giver with takers.”
Assertion Supported
Grant: Giver performance extremes are driven by strategy, not cognitive ability
“And you know, there is a piece of the story that's explained by ability, but even after controlling for cognitive ability tests for various kinds of skill metrics the, you know, sort of the polarization of giver performance held up and it turned out to be much…”
Assertion Supported
Grant: Research shows takers experience more day-to-day pleasure than givers
“Jennifer Ocker has some data suggesting that, you know, sort of day to day takers experience more pleasure than givers do because they get to make like every choice is exactly what they want.”
Assertion Supported
Grant: Helping others only improves personal productivity with good time management
“So we know, for example, there's some neat research by Rapp and colleagues, which basically shows that if you spend a lot of time helping other people if you have poor time management skills, that's really bad for your performance or your productivity. But if …”
Insight
Grant: Expertise does not eliminate high quality variance in creative work
“Once people achieve expertise, they're still like, they're still going on lots of random walks. And you know, they may have cleared some objective bar of quality where like, you know, like Shakespeare, like Shakespeare's worst play would still be better than m…”
Insight
Grant: Juggling a few ideas boosts creativity via subconscious incubation
“The one caveat I want to put on that though, is we also know that, you know, very frequently sort of subconscious thought is more creative than conscious thought. You've probably tracked the Dijkstra house work on this at some point. And you know, I think that…”
Insight
Grant: Comparing yourself to strangers sets unrealistic expectations of greatness
“Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that one of the most dangerous things you can do is you can compare yourself to anybody who you don't know. Because, like, you know, they're, you're only gonna have access if, you know, if they've been careful about having pride …”
Assertion Supported
Grant: Highly creative high schoolers grow up with half a household rule
“If you look at highly creative high schoolers, for example,
On average they had about half a rule in their household, whereas they're sort of, I don't know how that works, but averages are misleading in many ways.
Not just this one.
There you go.
but you know…”
Assertion Supported
Grant: Kids believe parents prioritize achievement despite parents preaching kindness
“In the data you know, parents say that,
The concern for others is their most important value, but kids think that achievement is their most important value.”
Insight
Adam Grant: Relying on Kids for Advice Builds Their Resilience
“Relying on kids is also a way to build their resilience because it shows them that, you know, that, that they're not helpless that they, you know, they have the strength to do things for others.”
