Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking

If we are intent upon answering our most serious questions, from climate change to poverty, and curing diseases to designing new products, we need to work with people who think differently, not just accurately. And this requires us to take a step back and view performance from a fundamentally different vantage point.

‘The most significant trend in human creativity is the shift from individuals to teams, and the gap between teams and individuals is increasing with time’,

A physicist who can accurately predict the position of the moon doesn’t need a different opinion to help her do her job. She is already bang on the money. Any other opinion is false. This goes back to our common-sense intuition. Thinking differently is a distraction. With complex problems, however, this logic flips. Groups that contain diverse views have a huge, often decisive, advantage.

‘The more diverse the perspectives, the wider the range of potentially viable solutions a collection of problem solvers can find.’ The trick is to find people with different perspectives that usefully impinge on the problem at hand.

‘perspective blindness’. This refers to the fact that we are oblivious to our own blind spots. We perceive and interpret the world through frames of reference but we do not see the frames of reference themselves. This, in turn, means that we tend to underestimate the extent to which we can learn from people with different points of view.

When you are surrounded by similar people, you are not just likely to share each other’s blind spots, but to reinforce them. This is sometimes called ‘mirroring’.

Those in diverse teams found the discussion cognitively demanding. There was plenty of debate and disagreement, because different perspectives were aired. They typically came to the right decisions, but they were not wholly certain about them. The fact that they had had such full and frank discussion of the case meant that they were exposed to its inherent complexity.

And this hints at the danger with homogenous groups: they are more likely to form judgements that combine excessive confidence with grave error.

A group of wise individuals would almost certainly have become an unwise board. The problem wouldn’t have been with any single person; the problem would have emerged from the whole.

In one wide-ranging analysis of twenty-six different studies in healthcare, it was found that a failure to speak up was ‘an important contributing factor in communication errors’.11 This isn’t just about safety-critical industries, it is about the human mind.

the failure to speak up can happen unconsciously. We do it automatically.

projects led by junior managers were more likely to succeed than those with a senior person in charge.

And yet when brought under a dominant leader (the dark circle), subordinates don’t say what they truly think, but what they think the leader wants to hear. They echo his thoughts and anticipate his feelings. There is an absence of rebel ideas.

Early on, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin conducted what they thought would be a revolutionary experiment: they eliminated managers and created a completely flat organisation. The experiment was indeed eye-opening but only because it was a failure. The lack of hierarchy created chaos and confusion, and Page and Brin quickly realised that Google needed managers to set direction and facilitate collaboration.

‘co-leadership can kill ideas because it creates uncertainty over who is in charge’.

Groups typically need a leader, otherwise there is a risk of conflict and indecision. And yet the leader will make wise choices only if they gain access to the diverse views of the group.

An environment is psychologically safe when people feel they can offer suggestions and take sensible risks without provoking retaliation.

When a decision has been made, and there is no turning back, dominance makes sense. Leaders need to galvanise their teams to get the job done. Dissent and diverse opinions are a distraction. But when evaluating as opposed to executing decisions, or coming up with new ideas, dominance tends to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. This is where a prestige dynamic is crucial. People need to speak up, to offer rebel ideas, safe from the retribution of a leader who interprets such contributions as a threat.

Psychological safety was far and away the most important of the dynamics we found,’

Most people feel more committed when they are given the opportunity to make a contribution. It strengthens motivation, boosts creativity and increases the potential of the entire organisation.’