What allows Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs to unlock their creative potential and voice their outlandish ideas? What is it about the thousands of other ideas that make them go unnoticed? How can we recognize a good idea and stand up for it in the face of conformity? That is what this book discusses. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, a book by Adam Grant, is about how to unleash the creativity and courage within us to become ground-breaking thought leaders.

Do I Have What It takes To Be Original?

Of Course! To channel that inner curiosity, ask questions such as “Why do defaults exist in the first place?”

Foster originality by experiencing vuja de, the opposite of déjà vu, meaning to face something familiar, but see it with a fresh perspective.

People tend to make the mental leap of “Since the world is the way it is, I guess it is supposed to be this way.” This thought process stops us from standing up against injustice and consider alternative routes.

Advocating for new systems often requires demolishing the old systems, and thus we hold back for fear of rocking the boat. The more one values achievement, the more they come to dread failure of losing your reputation.

“Practice makes perfect but it does not make new.”

Being risk adverse and feeling worried about the feasibility of your ideas make your ideas stronger, because it shows that you care and want to defend your propositions.

When embracing danger in one domain, offset risk by exercising caution in another domain. For example, a stock broker may put his money in one a high risk, high reward company, but he will also back it up with many other low risk, low reward offers.

How Do We Choose Which Ideas to Pursue?

On average, creative geniuses are not qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produce a greater volume of work, which gives them greater variability and higher chance of originality.

The first several solutions to a problem are normally conservative, but later ideas push the envelope in creativity.

Feedback is key to judge the quality of an idea. Taking comments from your colleagues and targeted audience gives insight to which ideas have the best chance at success.

When you are familiar with your environment/topic, it is better to react with gut instincts. When you are not familiar, it is better to take time to assess and evaluate.

“If you stop and take the time to think, it is easy to lose the forest in the trees.”

Starting with a solution when there was no problem in the first place means the idea is likely to fail (Example: The Segway).

A novel idea is likely to succeed if the inventors are always working and thinking about how to improve their idea — they are meticulous.

The more successful one has been in the past, the worse they perform in a new environment.

Warby Parker’s idea selection process: allows all employees to add their ideas to a communal online document. Everyone is allowed to comment and critique each other’s ideas. This led to a massive rise in the number of new ideas. Managers could vote the promising ones up and the bad ones down, but the technology team had full control over which ones they wanted to pursue. It is a meritocracy for ideas.

When to speak up

When people try to assert power without being respected, others perceive them as difficult, coercive, and self-loathing, even if they have the moral higher ground.

The best time to speak up is when you have status, because then others will see you stand for something other than opposing the status quo.

When pitching a novel idea, the recipients are looking to poke holes in the idea, and thus it is advantageous to first talk about the weaknesses in the idea because it reduces skepticism, makes you sound smarter, makes you more trustworthy, and it leaves the audience with a more favorable assessment due to human psychology.

Writing only about positive experiences is perceived as naïve or met with skepticism.

Listing negatives can make the audience think that they are not that bad and listing more negatives can actually make them like the concept more.

Repeating and reiterating information grows familiarity and thus makes the recipient like the idea more. Short messages mixed in with other ideas maintains the audience’s curiosity. Having a delay between presentation and evaluation allows the idea to sink in.

When confronting a dissatisfying situation, there are four possibilities for reaction:

  • Exit: leave the situation to find a better alternative.
  • Voice: speak your concerns and actively try to better the situation.
  • Persist: muscle through difficult times.
  • Neglect: do the bare minimum to stay in the position.

Exit and Voice are the only viable options for sharing your ideas, and neither is inherently better than the other.

When thinking about their past, most people regret not speaking up more and censoring less than vice versa.

At work, our sense of commitment and control depends primarily on our direct boss.

Similarly, our audience effects how we communicate: agreeable audiences make us avoid conflict, while disagreeable audiences make us open to conflicts and new ideas.

Being middle management causes the most lack of originality, thus sending ideas up or down the corporate ladder may get ideas to stick.

Procrastination can be used as a tool for new ideas and creative approaches.

People who plan ahead and act according to the plan are seen as rigid and have difficulty seeing other alternatives.

Putting off tasks allows for divergent thinking and consequently, a wider range of original concepts.

Improvisation can spark novel and groundbreaking ideas, if it is backed up with a lot of experience and ideas testing.

Being a pioneer is seen as the way to win the market, but they actually have 47% failure rate compared to 8% for latecomers:

  • Pioneers tend to overstep; scale up too fast. 3 out of 4 startups fail due to premature scaling.
  • Pioneers tend to be risk takers and prone to making impulsive decisions.
  • When you are first, you make all the mistakes with nothing to go off of.
  • Pioneers tend to get stuck with their early ideas while other companies observe market change and shifting consumer tastes and adjust accordingly.

There is a trend that originally hits early or late in life. Conceptual thinkers like Einstein hone in on one solution early and develop it. Experimental thinkers like Robert Frost take years getting to know a field and acquire background knowledge with a specific goal in sight. Their original ideas hit later in life.

To sustain originality as we age, the best bet is to adopt an experimental approach — make fewer plans, and start testing tentative ideas/solutions.

When most people make decisions, they follow a line of reasoning to see what would achieve the best result. However, if one is always changing the status quo, they base decisions off their identity: What would a person like me do in this situation? This gives them greater psychological freedom to take risks.

Working together

Sharing similar tactics creates better alliances, even if the two groups care about different causes. However, if their tactics are above 61% similar, the organizations are less likely to form alliances, because they cannot learn from one another.

Positive and negative experiences are amplified when we share them leading to even greater feelings of comradeship.

Additionally, moderate status difference in the two organizations foster alliances. The higher status organization can gain fresh perspectives and updated agendas, while the lower status group gains respect.

Often having organizations with the same goal can become hostile towards each other due to small differences (known as horizontal hostility).

When dealing with original ideas, One must be careful with how you communicate your “Why.” By answering the question instead with your “How,” the radical ideas do not spark anger, and can even enlighten radicals to their impractical ideas.

It is more emotionally draining to deal with “frenemies” because they are inconsistent. Evidence shows we ought to cut frenemies and convert enemies for better life quality.

Converted enemies are more rewarding to have as allies than people who have always been advocates. The new allies feel motivated to maintain a positive relationship, and they are the most effective at persuading others to join the movement.

Starting with an unexpected topic and then trying to relate it to something familiar can develop ideas that are both novel and useful.

Radical thinking is often needed to put the original stake in the ground, but once it is planted a temperate Mediator helps reach wider audiences.

To build coalitions across conflict lines, research finds sending peace makers, and not determined individuals is better for listening to the other sides opinions, identifying common goals/methods, and engaging in joint problem solving.

We need to think differently about values. Instead of assuming others share our values, or trying to convince them to adopt ours, we ought to present our values as a means of pursuing theirs.

How childhood affects originality

Society assumes that younger people are more receptive to rebellious ideas than older people who become conservative and more entrenched in their beliefs with age, but surprisingly birth order and parenting style has a greater effect.

Being the firstborn in a family makes them more risk adverse compared to laterborns.

Siblings tend to be different from one another due to younger siblings not wanting to be in the same niche as their older siblings. And since firstborns tend to emulate their parents and take on parental responsibilities like chores earlier than the younger siblings, the laterborns tend towards less traditional paths.

There are two ways to raise a rebel: 1. Give them enough independence for them to explore their own interests and protection to get away with autonomy and 2. Restrict their behaviors harshly until they fight back.

By granting autonomy to children, and parenting them through explanations of what they did wrong, that gives them the ability to decide what values they want to follow and which to question. Teenagers are also less likely to break rules when they are given a rationale for its existence.

Incorporating other people’s emotions into an explanation changes the argument from logical to emotional, which is more effective at persuading people to follow rules.

Emphasis on respecting all people no matter their background, ethnicity, gender, ect. causes the child to develop into a more courageous person.

Gratifying a child’s character instead of their actions reinforces their behavior. “Want to help?” is a worse question compared to “Want to be my helper?” This internalizes identity into children especially in children around the age of eight.

Telling a child that they are smart gives them a fixed point of view of their intelligence, and makes them less likely to take risks. Instead, praise their efforts and encourage them to see their abilities as malleable and to persist through obstacles.

Having role model(s) other than one’s parents raise their aspirations and originality, even if the role models are fictional. By introducing many role models into a child’s life, they have a broader world view and are more likely to reach for the stars.

Rethinking groupthink

Groupthink: The tendency to seek consensus of the group instead of fostering dissent; the enemy of originality.

The problem of groupthink does not revolve around the cohesiveness of a group, but of overconfidence, reputation concerns, and the openness of the individual to speak their own opinions.

Cohesive groups have the benefits of enhanced communication, and feel secure enough in their roles to challenge one another.

Companies tend towards one of three groups for their hiring processes: professional, star, and commitment:

  • Professional: Hire based off acquired skills. Ex: Software engineer position available to those who know Python.
  • Star: Hire based off future potential and brightest hires. Ex: Software engineer position for those who have an IQ above 200.
  • Commitment: Hire based off commitment to company values and norms. Ex: Software engineer position for those who are dedicated to service, speaking up, and extroversion.

Commitment cultures have shown to have low failure rates, but slower growth and difficulty integrating diversity. As a result, they do not learn or adapt, and do not have better or more reliable financial results than their competitors.

Since commitment cultures do well in the short term, and other blueprints prosper in the long term, one might think just to change blueprints with enough time, but research shows that changing the blueprint causes more failure, than if nothing changed, even with small changes.

As long as group members feel that their colleagues have their best interests in mind, dissenting ideas improves the quality of ideas, even in high-stakes settings and even if the dissenting opinions are wrong.

In Bridgewater Associates investments company, the company culture holds employees accountable to think independently and enrich the culture through dissenting. This fundamentally altered the way employees make decisions.

Bridgewater assigns every employee a score in seventy-seven dimensions such as practical thinking, open-mindedness, assertiveness, and reliability to let others know how believable they are in any such category. Expressing an opinion in one dimension is weighted by how believable you are in that same dimension.

Bridgewater also has a list of over 200 values for employees to internalize. The main one is to think for yourself. The values encourage disagreements and thus combat conformity.

Studies show having more than 4 core values does not add any more benefits. However, Bridgewater has over 200 to emphasize their employees to think for themselves.

In Bridgewater, no one has the right to a critical opinion without speaking up about it.

Consensus over values is more important than the values themselves.

Devil’s advocates are not useful, unless they are real people with real opinions speaking their minds.

A culture that emphasizes discussing solutions over discussing problems becomes a culture of advocacy and dampens inquiry, which means missing out on the chance to learn from a broad range of perspectives.

When every member of a group has different information, inquiry must precede advocacy.

Knowing other’s preferences degrades quality of group decisions. Limiting one owns expression on a topic, helps see the other pros/cons.

Comparing and contrasting alternatives gives rise to better discussions than talking about each alternative one at a time.

Instead of moving problems to a committee to solve, discussing the issue transparently to let everyone in the group make their own opinions is more valuable.

Series of randomized, controlled experiments with objective outcomes trumps the opinions of committees.

To start changing an organization’s culture, having an open meeting to critic managers and leader may be a good first step.

Managing Emotions

There are two main ways for handling uncertainty:

  • Strategic Optimism: anticipate the best, stay calm and setting high expectations.
  • Defensive Pessimism: expect the worst, feel anxious and imagining all the things that can go wrong.

Studies show that tasks that require focus and accuracy are benefited by defensive pessimism due to the conversion of anxious energy into motivation and once they consider the worst, they are driven to avoid it.

Defensive pessimism springs confidence not from ignorance or delusions about the difficulties ahead, but from a realistic evaluation and a holistic plan.

“Fear forces you to prepare more rigorously and see potential problems more quickly.”

Plotting many emotional trajectories of participants, studies show there are two major tracks: those who are content through major stretches of time and those who struggled early and triumphed later. Despite being confronted by more negative emotions, type two people report greater satisfaction and stronger sense of purpose.

To encourage others to feel inspired by original ideas, do not calm down their worries, psych them up by emphasizing the impact on people’s lives.

When anxious, focusing on feeling excited instead of suppressing the emotion can channel one’s energy more be more persuasive or confident.

Just because it is your idea, does not mean you are the best person to persuade others.

Showing how others can/have been affected by the idea brings an emotional persuasive touch.

Having just one other person voice an outlying position, makes it more likely for others to voice the same or other outlying opinions.

It is easier to rebel when it feels like an act of conformity. Other people are involved, so we can join in too.

Channeling the anxious energy into motivation, humor, or curiosity is a better way to use the energy than getting the energy out through anger or physically.

Anger is a force that motivates people to speak up and act, but it can also make them less effective in doing so.

Two main ways to manage anger: surface acting (putting on a mask to act unfazed) and deep acting (become the character and change inner feelings by being empathetic). Deep acting is more sustainable for managing emotions.

Venting is actually counterintuitive for releasing anger, unless there is some time to process the event and are not blinded by anger or consumed by distress. Instead, focus on the victims that have suffered from it.

“The more you vent about the person who wronged you want to lash out in retaliation.”

When a change is framed in terms of gains, we protect what we do not want to lose. However, when it is framed in terms of loss, we do whatever it takes to avoid that loss, even if it means risking a bigger one.

If one wants to change behavior, is it better to frame in terms of gain or loss?

If they see the change as risky, they already are comfortable with the status quo, so seeing the benefits does not do much. Instead, accentuate the bad things. Guaranteed loss makes taking a risk more appealing.

If they see the change as safe, emphasize the good things that will happen as a consequence. They will want to act immediately to gain those rewards.

To drive people out of their comfort zones, one must cultivating dissatisfaction, frustrations, or anger at the current state to make it guaranteed loss. Make the gap between now and the future as big as possible in terms of personal enjoyment.

“The audience was only prepared to be moved by [Martin Luther King Jr.’s] dream of tomorrow after he had exposed the nightmare of today.”

Brainstorming attack strategies of the opponent and then evaluating how to mitigate those risks can broaden views of weaknesses and focus attention on one or two plans of improvement.

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it difficult to plan the day” -E. B. White.

Conclusion

Create a larger volume of work, to have a better chance that one of them will be successful.

Be risk adverse and care about your ideas.

Probe colleagues for feedback.

Go with your gut when you have firsthand background knowledge. Otherwise, analyze and evaluate.

Skeptical audiences are calmed by verbalizing weaknesses and then strengths.

Great partnerships are made by, similar tactics, not similar goals.

Latecomers have higher success rates than pioneers in their field.

Channel anxious energy into constructive motivation through excitement.