In 2009, Blackberry owned 50 percent of the smartphone market. By 2014, however, with the iPhone’s rise in popularity, that number tumbled to 1 percent.
Part of Blackberry’s decline was founder Mike Lazaridis’s belief that the world would never want more from a mobile phone than to make calls and send and receive emails.
Put another way, Lazaridis failed to change his mind.
Consistency: A Double-Edged Sword
One of the many narratives surrounding success is the importance of consistency. We’re reminded to put in the reps. Never skip a day. Fall in love with monotonous consistency.
We hear stories about people who chased their dream, overcame obstacles, and silenced their naysayers along the way… all the while, we, the reader, ignore the dangerous allure of survivorship bias.
Success stories inspire and emphasize the importance of consistency in what we do. The commitments we honor. Our abstinence from a particular vice. The frequency in which we work out or publish online or practice mindfulness.
What can be problematic, however, in consistency is how we think. If we’re fixed on a particular worldview, we risk making decisions—or, in Lazaridis’s experience, not making decisions—that can impact businesses, our lives, and the lives of others.
Rethinking (Or How to Think Better)
We live in a rapidly-changing world where access to information is more accessible than before. And as such, we must train ourselves to adopt a flexible mindset and adapt to change as and when needed.
No longer is it enough to merely think better. To build on what we hold to be true and risk the many guises of confirmation bias. Instead, we must learn how to question the validity of our self-truths. We must learn to rethink.
One way to do that, says Grant, is to think like a scientist. Scientists are aware of the limits of their understanding; run experiments to test hypotheses and discover knowledge; are curious and ask better questions.
At work, we can embrace the joy of being wrong when a project fails to deliver the result we promised. “You were right. I was wrong. How can we improve next time?” At home, we can disagree with our own arguments after a conflict. “I was wrong to overreact. How can I be better?”
To quote Grant,
Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn [emphasis mine].
Indeed, our strength lies not in our stubborn refusal to budge when we think we’re right but in our willingness to rethink when we’re not.
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