What if you could reach the greatest, groundbreaking producer of ideas. What would be the way this transforms your business, research work, or grounds? Furthermore, what will likely take place if you put your smart producer to another person’s, for joining their strengths?
The reality is, all of us can reach such a generator. Maybe you reason that our brains may serve as the Best Producer of Ideas. Whereas it’s indisputable that our brainpower has been important in dealing with complicated tasks, there’s also another important element we must look for, discover and incorporate into the mixture if we need to achieve it.
That element has incredible strengths. That may cause blind spots to disappear, expand our expertise, and discover all infant ideas and enable it to thrive.
As you’ll get to know in these chapters, that element could be defined as cognitive diversity – it is the heterogeneity in the intellects we connect with. When you know how to utilize its strength, you would become a gigantic power.
Chapter 1 – Surrounding ourselves with individuals that are the same as us weakens our possibility of achievement.
Assuming you are a Chief Executive Officer employing a fresh administrator of finance. The last two candidates have the same experience and merit. One has the same perceptions as you regarding corporate policy, and the second stated some issues regarding your 5-year scheme. Which person will you employ?
We have a habit of being with individuals we relate to, in appearance, opinions, and viewpoints. This unconscious practice is called homophily, which happens since it is confirming to see our actions and ideas imitated by others that surround us, even if they are families, coworkers, or friends. However, the fact is, homophily meaningfully hinders the achievement as a group.
The issue with this concept has been that homophily forms collective blindness. Although a group consists of extremely intelligent people, when everybody thinks alike, they won’t know the things they have been missing. Those blind points regularly aren’t the outcome of the negligence of just one person. Those may occur from incidental causes we have no control over, such as the environment we were born in or the professors we had in university.
We can notice the devastating repercussions of the concept of homophily when we observe the CIA’s former recruitment patterns. Before September eleven, the CIA possessed a lengthy custom of mainly employing officers who reflected employees they already had: white men of the upper and middle classes that graduated with liberal arts degrees from college.
That sameness entailed that, in spite of having a lot of employees with big funding on hand, CIA employees were miserable because of collective blindness. That homogenous group ignored essential hints regarding bin Laden’s increasing power. For example, this shortage of knowledge about Islam made them let go of him as prehistoric since he stayed inside his cave, dressed in a basic cloth wrap, and owned a lengthy beard.
They were unable to identify that he was purposely showing himself as a Prophet, and the cave had totally been an Islamic sign. That unawareness signified that they misjudged the danger bin Laden caused, adding to the frightening disasters that happened in the US on the 11th of September, 2001.
Therefore, what is the way we conquer homophily since it is in people’s nature? Throughout the next chapters, you’ll find out the way to stay away from collective blindness as you accept the rebel inside.
Chapter 2 – When dealing with difficult issues, the disparity is only as essential as intelligence.
Think of this supposition: when the most rapid relay group could be made by making multiple Usain Bolts, the best group of economics specialists could be made by making multiple of this earth’s best competent forecasters. Does that make sense?
Even though the above statement looks logical, it’s wrong. Dealing with difficult problems needs more than only skill and intelligence. This needs diversity. Also, that diversification should not be restricted to demographic features, like religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, or age. That needs to be the diversification of minds, in other words, cognitive diversity, a concept we would not realize by multiplying our intelligent predictor because we would be copying the exact mind.
Cognitive diversity by itself has been difficult and realizing it needs more than only a cursory evaluation of demographic data. To form an assorted group, we have to think of our candidates’ certain set of abilities. For example, 2 economics specialists may possess distinct nationalities and genders. However, when they utilize the exact economic structure to deal with problems, they’ll get the exact results.
But, if we employ economists who make use of distinct structures, they will use different information, inquire about distinct issues, and have different assumptions. This distinction of methods would raise the group’s chance of creating accurate economic guesses because significant variables would not be ignored.
When we form a group that is diversified cognitively, we raise what is called group wisdom, that is the extensive range of views in that group gives it full coverage. But that collective intelligence occurs not only from erudition. Right wisdom in a team needs a profound knowledge of people’s attitudes.
We may see a great illustration of wisdom as a team in the office during the hiring processes of Alastair Denniston around Bletchley Park at the time of WWII. Together with intellectuals and mathematicians, Denniston employed demographers to decode German crypts. The group saw that every encryption started with 3 letters were not pieces of those messages.
Those letters showed the code structures of German encryption devices. Thinking of the places an operator’s brain goes in an instant of severe stress, the group recognized that those letters had been either a German female’s name’s initials – maybe his girlfriend or wife – or one swear word. In the absence of a diversified group that had team intelligence, that significant information might be ignored.
Denniston’s group had not been successful just because the group was cognitively and demographically diversified; however since the group was nurtured in the appropriate manner. Next, let’s look at the things a diversified group requires to succeed.
Chapter 3 – In the absence of strong communication, there would be no advantage of diversity.
Did you experience a meeting where you are nervous because you don’t agree with your boss and you don’t feel at ease opposing? Or maybe you have an excellent idea to give, however, when your confident colleague and your boss are around, it’s difficult to voice out your opinion.
These cases are popular even in the most general workplaces as a result of the dominance hierarchy. For all group conditions, a leader would be chosen or he/she would occur. And since people have been functioning under stratified social forms for a long time, they don’t even recognize them all the time. However, these forms have been a threat to diversification cognitively since they don’t allow non-leaders to voice out their opinion, just like how you had been suppressed in the gathering. Except leaders encourage open communication, brilliant thoughts such as yours would be gone.
So, is there a way to conquer this dominance hierarchy by getting opinions more on an individual level? Not really. In December 1978, the demise of 20 individuals on the plane flying to Portland tragically demonstrates that. That aircraft didn’t crash because of failures of devices for landing – the first worry of the captain – however, it crashed since the aircraft did not have enough fuel. The aircraft captain’s traveling engineer knew of the issue; however, he could not mention its implication. The ongoing culture of the work, in which the aircraft captains were called “sir” and inquiring if his ability was unfathomable, signified that the engineer could not talk till it became really late.
Would putting an end to leaders completely fix the issue caused by the dominance hierarchy? Unluckily, with no presence of leaders, we will be in a condition of indecision and conflict. However, by forming psychological safety, great heads may use the advantages of diversification cognitively by creating a surrounding that supports the sharing of ideas.
Amazingly, it isn’t really hard to form psychological safety around the office. For instance, Northwestern University’s Business School’s Leigh Thompson asserts that using an easy approach such as brainwriting – the idea in which workers provide ideas by jotting them on a piece of paper anonymously and voting for the greatest idea –conquers a lot of difficulties caused by a dominance hierarchy. This method guarantees that everybody has an opportunity to express oneself and their opinions are measured based only on their standard.
Psychological safety has been the most significant element if you want to be successful because producing ideas is an important step in getting at best solutions. Not all ideas will be brilliant; however, they may cause something that is ground-breaking.
Chapter 4 – A diversified group needs to consist of people who have been diverse among each other, to be really innovative.
What do Musk, Huffington, and Brin all share? All these names are great entrepreneurs and they stay in America, however, they all have another thing shared as well. It is either they were born elsewhere from America or their mothers and fathers were. Being a foreigner prepares people’s brains to think innovatively.
Innovation may happen slowly progressively –just like while a species is evolving – or that may occur really fast at the time 2 ideas clash in an unanticipated and exciting manner. There is less possibility for people that aren’t regularly exposed to their safe places to feel these surges of inspiration since their brains have developed into what they are used to. This is the reason why a lot of powerful entrepreneurs and innovators have been kids of migrants or migrants themselves because they’re not familiar with the habits and attributes of the new environment.
In changing 2 or further environments, the brains of migrants have been taught to recognize new opportunities. They can recognize the way their ideas may be combined together to create successful formulas and, essentially, they recognize the way they might merge their own ideas with the ideas of other people in innovative manners. This mindset initiates innovation.
Thus, what is the way for us to think creatively without having to migrate to a different country? The solution depends on what we intentionally provide ourselves with. Our thinking can be diversified by making sure that we are not captivated by only one field, and passing conceptual boundaries if not country boundaries. That had been a routine Charles Darwin used. Switching his studies from botany to zoology to geology, and to psychology provided him with a new perspective and enabled him to gather theories and concepts from several areas.
Equally, it’s essential that the web of individuals we interact with would be as diversified as it could be, if not, we may not see that important part of knowledge that might enable our idea to be successful. History has a lot of cases in which a brilliant idea did not attain its complete potential since it could not reach the appropriate network. Consider the engineer and mathematician, Alexandria’s Hero. During the 1st century AD, this man created an engine powered by steam. However, it appears that the invention of this engine could not get to the ears of the right engine producers, the people that might have assisted Hero completely using his innovation.
Regularly encountering different ideas and people from different fields enhances our brains; therefore we can make big ideas. At the time we allow these ideas to mix with an extensive community, we form the possibility of revolutionary innovation.
Chapter 5 – For fostering cognitive diversity, interacting with other opinions in relevant manners.
Let’s say you go to a gathering in which there are just a few familiar colleagues. You are happy with the thought of extending your network. However, at the time you leave sometime after, you get to know that you did not have conversations with anybody you did not know before. You had an awesome night; however, you didn’t increase your network.
That is the nature of people to find people we recognize. Ironically, the wider our social choices, there is the lower possibility that we are creating diversified friendship communities. Although it’s normal to interact with people of the same values and interests, that shows that there is the danger of being in chambers of echo.
Chambers of echo occur at the time our opinions are regularly repeated by the individuals that surround us, whether online or in the physical world. Unexpectedly, when contradictory beliefs find themselves in chambers of echo, these beliefs do not allow people to evaluate their thoughts; they essentially oppose them more.
This feature of chambers of echo – called people’s epistemic wall – had been observed around 2014 by Emma Pierson, a mathematician. She examined tweets relating to Michael Brown’s, a black man’s, death by the shootings of a police officer who was white, named Darren Wilson. 2 different groups were created – those who viewed Michael as the victim, contrary to those who viewed the police officer as the scapegoat.
Tweets turned to personal attacks when both groups interacted, and Wilson’s defenders accused Brown’s main advocate because of acted as the hate-spreader communism proponent having a cognitive problem. That sabotaging act made meaningful communication and thought of another viewpoint impossible.
So, what is the way we leave chambers of echo, in order for us to seriously explore other perspectives? The answer to that question lies in creating rational connections with people, regardless of being distinct. That was what Orthodox Stevenson experienced with a peer, Derek Black, a university student. After knowing that Derek had been a full supporter of the supremacy of white, instead of avoiding him, Stevenson called Derek to Shabbat.
Knowing that Derek had been a creation of the family environment, Stevenson tried to create reliance with him by common academic interests. Ultimately, Black understood that he was brainwashed by family members – and these people were making his chamber of echo. This made him leave his opinions regarding politics, in spite of the consequences it brought on the relationships inside the family.
The fellowship formed between Black and Stevenson illustrates the life-changing strength of meaningful relations. We may connect with another to undo echo chambers through empathy and trust.
Chapter 6 – When we enforce certain criteria on individuals, we lessen the chance of successful results.
Let’s say you’re at your peer’s home and somebody mistakenly spilled a carafe of orange juice on your dress. Your peer offers you some of their clean clothes, however, it doesn’t fit you. This is weird since both of you have the exact height and the alike weight.
Dresses are only one of the numerous day-to-day meets of us with normalization. Because only some people have the money for a tailored wardrobe, they buy clothes in fixed sizes. However, body shapes vary, although they have particular size ranges, that is the reason your peer’s clothes may not size you.
Standardization has been efficient in several cases – for instance, clothes manufacturing – however, it becomes an obligation at the time standards are enforced on people. Since they deny our uniqueness and do not give us room to go for our distinguishing sides.
The advantages of giving this room were detected at Google around 2014, following a group of psychologists who had a workshop involving administrative and sales employees. The staff was motivated to talk about their gifts and look for approaches to use them in practices in the office, instead of just following a well-known structure. Employees who were at the workshop outdid their coworkers, were more delighted, having an astonishing 70% more possibility to change to another position they wanted or up in rank.
At the times we talk about health, rejecting diversity may have extreme consequences. For instance, obesity has been a severe health issue in the world. There are numerous eating plans to be used to fight it, however, the effects are restrained or do not effective for long mostly.
This was demonstrated by Eran Segal, a computational biologist, who did a test regarding the subject around 2017. Segal calculated blood sugar replies from healthy subjects who only got their wheat from either sourdough made at home or commercially made bread. Segal discovered that, averagely, there had been no distinction among those 2 teams. But, there were noteworthy distinctions in the personal findings.
This reason for that has been that people’s stomachs host exceptional gatherings of bacteria that determine how every one of us digests the things we ingest. Eating schedules do not consider those; hence, except we shape the food we eat according to ourselves, we will not essentially get healthier although we’re consuming a good diet.
People are exceptional, both within and externally. A “standard size” method may lead to having everybody dressed up, however, only some would be dressed appropriately.
Chapter 7 – Before using the advantages of diversification, we have to defeat our prejudices and become ready to hear what others have to say.
There has been something really exclusive regarding learning reading while we were kids. For a lot of people, books had been a reason to move into a comfortable lap at the time a family member brought understanding to marks on pages. Gradually, those squiggles turned to letters, then to vocabulary, then to sentences, causing that wonderful instant at the time we can read on our own.
This skill to acquire new abilities from other people makes our species different from others. However, if we truly need to improve collective intelligence – accumulated intelligence as a team – we need to defeat bias.
Back then around 1970, participants of US orchestras had been mainly male since men were seen as greater musicians compared to females. Claudia Goldin from Harvard and Cecilia Rose from Princeton questioned this belief by proposing audits to those musicians behind the scenes. After this was accepted, the percentage of female musicians rose from 5 to approximately 40%, demonstrating that a lot of skilled females had been ignored as a result of gender prejudice and the procedure used for selection was not based on merit objectively.
A further prejudice that may hinder success is Ageism, something the fashion firm Prada discovered the difficult way. In the years 2014 – 2017, the tardy interaction of them with digital mediums caused a crucial profit decline. On the other hand, Gucci’s sales increased by 136% between the years 2014 – 2018, due to its digital tactics. This amazing result was the effect of the shadow board – the team of teenagers who instructed Gucci’s chief professionals on important decisions. Knowing the valuable understandings that their digital-savvy teenage workers could propose provide the firm with its advantage.
Shadow boards emphasize the significance of disseminating individual points of view and wisdom. Because complicated difficulties are really hard to fix alone, we need to be in groups to fix issues successfully. Disseminating ideas in a cognitively diversified group forms a cooperative place in which recipients acquire insight and contributors get linked to a network of support.
At the time we set our biases apart and surround ourselves in the midst of minds that have understanding and encounter that is different from our opinions, we form a group having a wide understanding. This, eventually, improves our possibilities of achievement.
Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed Book Review
A further prejudice that may hinder success is Ageism, something the fashion firm Prada discovered the difficult way. In the years 2014 – 2017, the tardy interaction of them with digital mediums caused a crucial profit decline. On the other hand, Gucci’s sales increased by 136% between the years 2014 – 2018, due to its digital tactics. This amazing result was the effect of the shadow board – the team of teenagers who instructed Gucci’s chief professionals on important decisions. Knowing the valuable understandings that their digital-savvy teenage workers could propose provide the firm with its advantage.
Shadow boards emphasize the significance of disseminating individual points of view and wisdom. Because complicated difficulties are really hard to fix alone, we need to be in groups to fix issues successfully. Disseminating ideas in a cognitively diversified group forms a cooperative place in which recipients acquire insight and contributors get linked to a network of support.
At the time we set our biases apart and surround ourselves in the midst of minds that have understanding and encounter that is different from our opinions, we form a group having a wide understanding. This, eventually, improves our possibilities of achievement.
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