Originals by Adam Grant: Create better ideas

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About the Author

Dr Adam Grant has been Wharton’s top-rated professor for seven straight years. He is a leading expert on how we can find motivation and meaning, and live more generous and creative lives. Adam Grant has been recognized as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers and Fortune’s 40 under 40.

He is the author of four New York Times bestselling books that have sold over two million copies and been translated into 35 languages: Give and Take, Originals, Option B, and Power Moves.

Adam is the host of WorkLife, a chart-topping TED original podcast. He writes on work and psychology for the New York Times, serves on the Defense Innovation Board at the Pentagon, and has been honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He has more than 3 million followers on social media and features new insights in his free
monthly newsletter, GRANTED.

Source: https://www.adamgrant.net/bio

Click here to buy on The Book Depository

https://www.bookdepository.com/Originals/9780753548080/?a_aid=stephsbookshelf

About the book

Originals by Adam Grant is about how to champion new ideas and fight group think.​

Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome
dissent.

You’ll learn from…
An entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest

A woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below An analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA

A billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him
A TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room
floor.

Source: https://www.adamgrant.net/originals

Links

Listen to the Adam Grant podcast, Work Life, here: https://www.adamgrant.net/worklife

Read a free chapter or download the discussion guide to the book here:
https://www.adamgrant.net/originals

BIG IDEA 1 (4:05) Be a diplomatic rebel.

There’s a story in the book about an engineer who challenged Steve jobs about distribution and production model. She asked for thirty days to prove he was wrong and she was right, and she did it. 

She took the initiative in making things better, this aligned with the culture Apple had created where betterment and continuous improvement was so important that anyone could challenge anyone (even Steve Jobs) on that basis.

If you want to change minds or radically change things you need to keep your ideas close to familiar, accepted ideas.

Being able to align your idea to something that people are already familiar with is really important, particularly if you’re doing something radically different. You can also make other people familiar with your idea by bringing it up regularly and containing it with another idea.

Adam Grant talked in the book about bringing up your idea 10 – 20 times so people will start to get familiar with it and start to form their own stories around it. They will also start to feel more comfortable with the new idea.

The trojan horse idea which hides the radical in the conventional.  A lot of us like the idea of big news, scary, radical changes but this is not for everyone.  Sometimes you need to hide your big radical idea in something conventional so that people don’t see it coming.

So being a diplomatic rebel will help you get your ideas across quickly by helping to get people onboard.

BIG IDEA 2 (7:16) Look around you.

This is about finding people who don’t like your idea and using them to stress test your idea. Find people who disagree and use them as your extreme users to test what could go wrong and find different perspectives.

Another thing is to find people from different department or industry and get them involved. In the book, Adam talks about broadening your frame of reference. This increases your creativity by looking from different fields and broadening your thinking.

Nobel Prize winners immerse themselves in artistic pursuits to broaden their thinking and reference.  Think about how job rotations or even just spending time with peers and colleagues in another department would broaden your thinking and increase your creativity. 

BIG IDEA 3 (9:57) – Embrace vu ja de.

This is seeing the same thing but through different perspective or eyes. When you realise everything is human made you can start to challenge everything more freely.  And to create better ideas, you need to get into the habit of challenging what is human made.

Everything is created therefore everything can be uncreated and changed. There was a quote in the Originals by Adam Grant book – “The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring if a better option exists.” This idea is incredibly empowering as you learn to let go of what has gone before you.

Look at the problems of everyday that makes you roll your eyes. How could that be looked at in a different way?  Look around you and see how different departments or industries do things. What can you learn? What can you change? 

Because everything is human made, everything can be changed.

Music By:  Don’t Stand a Chance – Instrumental Version Song by OFRIN

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