Three-sentence summary

Surround yourself with diversity. Foster a life full of curiosity, especially in positions of “power” and experience. Challenge “norms” and fear comfort.

Introduction

Despite our differences, we all share the desire to be happy. What [Gino’s] research suggests is that we can actually bring more joy into our lives by being rebels… [p.18]

What I loved about this book was that it started and ended with stories of “rebel” Massimo Bottura, head chef at Osteria Francescana — one of the highest-rated restaurants in the world breaking norms. For example, Bottura would help unload the delivery truck or play soccer in the streets with his staff, nothing was “below” him. When Bottura was asked who inspired him, he named Chinese conceptual artist Ai Weiwei [p. xiii]. In one of Weiwei’s performance pieces, he smashes a two-thousand-year-old historic Han Dynasty urn. Bottura was describing the performance and said, “Ai’s destructive gesture was actually a constructive one. A beginning. Break, transform, create.”

[Rebels] question their own assumptions and strongest beliefs, as well as the widely-accepted norms around them, to identify more creative, effective ways of doing transcendent work. [Rebels] are deviants, but in a positive and constructive way [p. xiv].

Gino identifies five core elements of rebel talent:

  1. novelty: seeking out challenge and the new.
  2. curiosity: child-like “why?”.
  3. perspective: broad view to see as others do.
  4. diversity: challenge pre-determined social roles.
  5. authenticity: remaining open and vulnerable in order to connect with and learn from others.

We Seek Comfort, but Comfort Limits Creativity

Every single day we can chose between focusing on what we know or what we don’t know [p. 69].

Conformity is the result of first-order thinking, while rebellious behavior comes from second-order thinking e.g., challenging norms.

Social Norms

From a young age — i.e., about three-years-old — we start to pick up on social norms and peoples’ “roles” in society. We are constructing our unique mental model of the world. Our models are heavily influenced by the people we surround ourselves with and the information that we consume. Roles help society run smoothly when aligned with our mental models of the world and that makes us comfortable. However, smooth seldom leads to innovation.

Roles often come with prescribed rules and/or expectations. Abiding by the rules helps guide “good” work, but stunts or even prevents exceptional work.

I grew up and currently live in what is know as “Tool City”, because tool manufacturing shops are ubiquitous. I worked at two of the shops; for a semester in high school and then a few years later for a semester in college. These experiences made a lasting impact on me. Mainly, I saw personally and still hear about how explicit rules like, “clock in at this time”, “don’t bring your phone”, etc. distract from doing exceptional work. Folks in these tool shops often “just put in the time” and resent their superiors. Workers in these situations actively disengage from their work. Gino talks about how “disengagement costs the American economy up to $550 billion in lost productivity [p. 166].”

Rules and norms in organizations and, more broadly, in society instill order and predictability [p. 13].

Power of Signals (i.e., mental model “triggers”)

Breaking social norms — e.g., wearing casual clothing to an important meeting, etc. — is a very powerful signal that can be both viewed positively and negatively. In a positive sense, one can break down established barriers. But, in a negative sense, it can also be viewed as one displaying superiority by explicitly ignoring – either explicit or implicit – social norms for the situation. There is a an external and internal cost associated with breaking norms, so this cost must be weighed against the benefits.

… consciously choosing not to conform [p. 15].

To signal status, deviations from the norm must demonstrate one’s autonomy to behave with one’s own inclinations and to pay for nonconformity [p. 15].

Signaling is an expedited way to display personality traits by eliciting triggers in others related to commonly-held mental models. Often, it’s necessary to signal the behavior that we want to see in others e.g., Napolean working “beneath” his level on the battlefield [p. 11]. However, one must be aware that signaling superior status, whether true or fabricated, through “conspicuous consumption” – i.e., “purchasing” elite status, even if it’s mostly on loan – is often extremely demotivating for those around oneself.

But as with conspicuous consumption and public generosity, something very powerful happens when we act in ways that are unconventional and unexpected [p. 13].

Tradition, Rituals and Processes without Protest

One of the main purposes of rituals and traditions is to impart and nourish values [p. 27].

However, breaking tradition often results in great disappointment. This applies to any tradition, including how things have been traditionally done at work. As humans, we often seek comfort in predictability and fear instances of unpredictability, even when the unpredictability establishes a new, superior tradition.

I’m using the term “tradition” fairly loosely to also refer to a “traditional process” in work-related environments.

Relatedly, sometimes folks who establish a process, let that process — at least in part — define them e.g., the process isn’t good, therefore, I am not good. Instead, what one must internalize is that one often acts on the information that was present at the time and therefore, a direct comparison of a better process now to the existing process is not a fair comparison. Another commonality is that people hesitate to break “tradition” when they’ve heavily invested in that tradition.

The traditions and rituals you encounter in your organization and in society often endure out of routine, rather than as a result of thoughtful deliberation [p. 30].

Gino mentioned a study where participants were told they would be paid by the number of t-shirts they folded. They were then primed by showing them how to fold a t-shirt. One group was shown an inefficient, nonsensical way to fold the t-shirts. Gino said, “as often happens in real life, most team members accepted, the nonsensical process without protest”.

Imitation increases as we age

… over-imitation actually increases as we age … [p. 29]

This is interesting to me because I remember being young and wanting to be “freer” and more independent. But as Gino said, as we age, we actually imitate and “depend” on others more. Doing foundational work is hard. Often, we let or want others to do the hard work so that we don’t have to because building a strong foundation requires wrestling with a lot of uncertainty and trying to predict the unpredictable e.g., does this solution scale?.

“Seeking ease” is something that we teach children e.g., how to most efficiently tie our shoes. More generally, we are trained to be efficient, similar to a robot i.e., to just do and not think.

I’ve questioned and thought to myself about how much time in life and at work — including in a position as a “skilled laborer” — is spent operating in mental “autopilot mode” and it feels quite significant. It’s only when I slow down, step back — sometimes literally taking a step back from my normal position at my desk — and question what I am doing that I break out of autopilot and actually think. It’s so easy to get caught up in doing what is minimally necessary to get the dopamine hit of marking a task as “done” and then moving on.

We work to finish assigned tasks without questioning the process or asking about overall goals [p. 67].

Thought:

I’d like to ponder the question about how todo lists — or Kanban boards — affect creativity. I certainly agree that they help track progress when coordinating work and/or working on many things concurrently, but I think they encourage efficiency rather than creativity.

Currently, I rely on hierarchical todo lists to break large tasks down into smaller tasks and while this is appropriate for coordinating work with others, it’s not necessary when coordination isn’t required, yet I still rely on it. I’d like to challenge myself to use other means for breaking down tasks that encourage creativity rather than efficiency in subtasks. I think this will also help with the problem that I’ve often encountered where I break a task down into subtasks before understanding the problem and end up having sub-tasks that are inaccurate or unnecessary.

Something else that I’ve struggled with personally, mentioned by Gino, is a fear of “wasting” the company’s time as we explore our curiosity. However, a valid counterargument is that there is a time when exploring curiosity deeply is and is not appropriate. This is yet another one of my personal weaknesses, (semi-)related to premature optimization i.e., exploring my curiosity too much about what an ideal solution would look like, when the business often benefits significantly more by incremental improvements over time [p. 104].

Homogenous teams _feel_ more effective because they are comfortable

… we gravitate to people just like us [p. 116].

… homogenous teams feel more effective [p.132].

Gino conducted a study that confirmed while homogeneous teams felt more effective, they were actually less effective at achieving the goals than a heterogenous team. Disagreements that come about in heterogenous teams are a “feature”, not a flaw [p. 134].

Being with others who are similar … leads us to think that we all have the same information, which discourages engagement [p.135].

Insights and innovation seldom arise when we’re feeling satisfied with the status quo. Rather, they come from the energy that’s created when we crave change [p. 195].

Framing and Perspective

When we frame work around learning goals … we perform better than if we frame work around performance goals [e.g., tests in school] … [p. 90].

Using words like could rather than should help open our minds to curiosity versus restrict curiosity, respectively [p. 85].

What we see in any situation … depends on our perspective [p. 105].

Related to the “self-fulfilling prophecy” [p. 126] — where success is defined by our own expectations — when groups are reminded of stereotypes, they either “fulfill” or ignore those stereotypes, based on whether they are reminded of or told explicitly that they are not true, respectively [p. 124].

Curiosity’s Place in Power and Experience

Intellectual curiosity is preferred to specialization [p. 63].

… [expertise is] a process that must be kept alive [it is not something that once achieved continues to exist] [p. 89].

The danger of the feeling of knowing is that it leads us to rationalize our prior views and decisions – and the urge gets stronger with more experience [p. 90]. … We all tend to process information in a self-serving manner [p. 94].

Gino refers to this as the “curse of knowledge” and is something that we need to acknowledge and remember as we interact with our less-experienced colleagues [p. 98].

People in powerful positions, or those who feel powerful, often act without fear.

Whether power is real or simply perceived, it leads us to take more risks, express stronger emotions and views, act based on our natural inclinations and impulses, and ignore situational pressure [p. 20].

… with age, self-consciousness increases, and so does our desire to make show of expertise [p. 37].

Ask Questions

Studies show that asking for advices increases rather than decreases perceived competence [p. 54]. It was suggested that this is because by asking others questions, it is “stroking their egos”.

A culture of curiosity is most effectively established through demonstration by leaders i.e., leaders who ask questions rather than define direction. [p.68] Not only does this help establish a culture of curiosity, it also helps with psychological safety in teams, which is the prerequisite for fearless exploration by team members.

My current boss is absolutely phenomenal at displaying curiosity. She is always challenging us to think about the state of the world today and what it could look like, but more generally, avoiding complacency. I honestly don’t think you could lead a culture of curiosity more effectively than how she does.