(I’m STARTING with an autobiographical tangent today.  Isn’t that exciting?  Anyway, a year or two ago I decided to do therapy.  This was after a lot of research about psychology, the nature of happiness and a whole bunch of other stuff.  I searched for a year to find a client-centered (AKA Rogerian or person-centered) therapist and got some appointments set up.  I really enjoyed the experience!  Except even though I knew exactly what to expect, I still kind of expected like … movie style therapy.  You know, the dark, wood paneled room with a couch you lay on.  A doctor with a yellow notepad on their knee.  A scene where the doctor makes some pithy remark and it brings tears to your eyes and all of a sudden the world makes sense.  A “breakthrough,” as it were.  Yeah, none of that happened.

I noticed that I was constantly quoting all this research I’d done to the counselor, and name-dropping books and would be like “So did you read this one?  Eh?  How about this one?” and she would be like “Nah, I haven’t read it.  I’ll write that down.  Sounds like a good one.”  I expected her to call out that pattern at some point and be like “Josh, why do you feel the need to prove your intelligence to me by referencing all these books?” but she never did.  Which is consistent with client-centered therapy but still … I wanted that movie experience!

Anyway, this is a really long way of me saying I don’t know why my reviews of books always end up being me talking about other books I’ve read.  Maybe it’s because I got my degree later in life and was always insecure about other people taking me seriously so I want to show them that I’ve done my research.  Maybe it’s because when I review a book I want people to know I’m putting more thought into it than someone just going “Yeah, I read it and I didn’t like it.  NEXT.”  Maybe my brain just … works by making connections like that and I can’t help myself.  In any case, that’s not going to change with this review.  Prepare for me to review a book by talking about how like and unlike other books it is.)





Think Again is a book about how important it is to rethink.  By rethink what Grant means is to examine our beliefs to see if they are still valid.

In the first chapter he introduces the concept of goggles we wear when we’re looking at or discussing ideas.  He Outlines a few key frames of mind we often find ourselves in:

• Preacher — we enter this mode when our sacred beliefs are challenged — we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals
• Prosecutor — we enter this mode when we see flaws in someone else’s argument — we attempt to prove them wrong and ourselves right
• Politician — we enter this mode when we’re trying to persuade an audience — we do what we can to gain approval of those we’re speaking to

Most of the time we fall into one of these three modes.  What Grant is advocating for is a fourth mode, one that requires effort to enter into.  This is “scientist” mode — someone who looks at data objectively, creates experiments, makes projections and learns from their mistakes.

Although he doesn’t ever mention it, this reminds me a ton of Deming’s work with Japanese manufacturers after world war II.  Deming popularized (though didn’t invent) a technique called “Plan Do Check Act” or PDCA.  PDCA is a pattern you use to perform experiments in work.  It is heavily used in Toyota and other lean manufacturers.

Let’s use an example.  Let’s say in the process of assembling cars Toyota has been inflating wheels before placing them on the cars.  Someone points out that they could potentially go faster if they put the wheels on THEN inflate them, since they have to check the pressure later and they could just do the inflation there when they’re checking pressure anyway.

(This scenario is completely made up, by the way)

Toyota would have them put together a document outlining what needs to change, and what metrics they think it will change.  They think it will reduce the time on the tire mounting step by ten seconds, increase the time at the inflation step by five seconds, and thus save five seconds overall.

(Once again, I must remind you that this is made up and has no relation to reality — it’s just an example to demonstrate PDCA)

So they’ve PLANNED their change.  They’re going to update instructions at those two stations, train the employees, and then time it to see how it goes.  They DO next.  They put it into practice.  They CHECK after a day of doing it that way and find out the actual, quantitative result.  Maybe it went exactly as planned.  Maybe it actually takes longer because they didn’t anticipate something.  Whatever the results, they ACT next — they decide if they’re going to make this the new standard, or if they’re going back to the old way.

PDCA is a technique that puts a workplace into SCIENTIST mode when it is exercised correctly.  Without PDCA (or similar technique) a workplace would default to Preacher, Prosecutor or Politician mode.  What would probably happen is the tire mounting guys would be in Politician mode with the boss.  The tire inflating guys, seeing that will cause them more work, would come over and enter into Prosecutor mode.  They would argue about it and the manager would make a decision based on the argument, NOT based on an actual experiment.  Not only would this be less effective, it would insert a bunch of emotion into work.

If you want to be REALLY effective the book The High Velocity Edge would argue that you need to make an exact prediction of what will happen so that you can then figure out where you’re wrong, and how well you understand your own processes.

So Grant points out that we need to be in Scientist mode more often.  He then spends the rest of the book laying out strategies to enter scientist mode in a number of contexts:

1. As an individual (how do you get yourself to rethink your own conclusions?)
2. With another person (how do you get someone else to rethink their conclusions?)
3. In organizations (how do you make scientific thinking the default in your communities or workplace?)

He includes a lot of interesting anecdotes, mixed in with some interesting research.  I thought it was an engaging read but it left me a little disappointed.

I think that’s basically because this should’ve (and has been) three different books.  I think the most valuable section was the first (rethinking as an individual).  Now, maybe that’s because I’m really interested in the subject…

(I cannot get into podcasts.  I think it has something to do with ADHD-PI, but they’re just not my thing.  Except for one podcast, called You Are Not So Smart.  I think it’s because he started with a blog and hooked me, and then transitioned to a podcast.  Anyway, every episode he looks into one subject, usually a specific fallacy.  I’m super interested in how we deceive ourselves, so this podcast was perfect for me)

… but I think I’d rather it be it’s own book because it is an incredibly difficult thing to do.  Rethinking your own conclusions is not something that comes naturally to basically anyone.  It takes a lot of effort, and I think a deep-dive into just that subject would be more than worth it.  I think it’s the most important thing Grant brings up, and I think including the other two subjects just dilutes it.

In fact, he brings up a very similar point all on his own!  When talking about helping other people rethink he interviews a championship debater who says “If you have too many arguments, you’ll dilute the power of each and every one … they are going to be less well explained, and I don’t know if any of them will land enough — I don’t think the audience will believe them to be important enough …”

Grant has three books here:

1. How to change your own thought process
2. How to convince someone else (or at least help them examine their conclusions)
3. How to create a learning organization (more or less)

The most important of the three, in my mind, is number one.  He could’ve focused on just that subject for a whole book and created an actual process for helping people rethink, become more self-aware, measure their own cognitive processes … there’s a lot of meat there.

Instead he diluted that really important subject with a second subject that has been written about a ton and a third subject that … has also been written about a ton (remember “The high velocity edge” that I just mentioned?  How about Kaizen, The Choice, The Goal, The Toyota Way, Toyota Kata, The Culture Code, Turn the Ship Around, Good Strategy Bad Strategy … even Multipliers, which I reviewed recently, touched on creating a learning organization).

In the end none of the parts have quite enough meat to really stick on their own.  It’s a well written book, and it does orbit around a central idea so I can’t really say it’s unfocused, but in terms of implementation …

Remember the first aside above where I talked about therapy?  The first book my therapist recommended was a book by Brene Brown called “The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.”  Brown (who ironically provides a blurb on the back of “Think Again”) wrote a book that had something like … a hundred different things to try in order to Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.  It was overwhelming to me.  If I tried one thing a week it would take me two years to get through this book!  Couldn’t she have narrowed it down a little, just found the things that work really well?  Or maybe created some kind of framework that says “try these things first and, if they don’t work, skip these things and try these” or something?  Anything is better than “Here’s a hundred ideas that may or may not work.  Good luck!”

Adam Grant has a similar problem.  He doesn’t create a structure, he just says “This is important, and maybe one of these things will help.”  If you’re writing a book, I feel like you should take a strong position.

And Grant makes the point that rethinking is all about being willing to change your strong positions.  In the conclusion he includes the marks and notes from his edits to indicate that he was constantly rethinking the whole book (he contemplated including these marks throughout the entire book, but thankfully opted not to).  That is admirable and is consistent with his message, but it makes for a weaker, less implementable book.

Maybe that’s fine?  Maybe that’s the point?  I don’t know, but I wish he’d just focused on one context and built a book that has the capacity to really change people’s behavior.  I don’t quite think the book he wound up with will.

(The second book my therapist recommended was called “If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!”  I loved it so much.  From that book:

“Nothing important gets solved once and for all, finally and forever.”)