Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights By Gary Klein Public Affairs, 2013
I’m often called on to facilitate workshops with executives, managers, individual contributors, and third-party partners. These are costly engagements — not because of my fees, but because getting groups of busy people to focus their attention on a single thing for two or three days comes at the expense of many other things they have to do. The upside: good workshops can generate incredibly valuable insights. So I’m always looking for ways of becoming better at creating the conditions that allow insights to emerge. Seeing What Others Don’t is a guide for doing so, and one of the most useful books I’ve read on the subject.
It starts with a valuable insight: performance improvements usually result from decreasing errors and increasing insights. However, most organizations focus on the former (Klein cites Six Sigma as a notable example), but not enough on the latter. (“When we put too much energy into eliminating mistakes, we’re less likely to gain insights. Having insights is a different matter from preventing mistakes.”)
The book seeks to answer three fundamental questions:
-
What sparks an insight?
-
What prevents us from getting it, even when it’s right in front of us?
-
How can I increase the flow of insights?
The author’s MO is to look at case studies; he “hunted” for and studied scores of cases of situations where an insight made the difference. This led him to uncover four conditions that lead to the triggering of an insight:
-
Recognizing connections
-
Recognizing coincidences and curiosities
-
Recognizing contradictions
-
Creative desperation
The case studies are invariably engaging: they range from the story of how financial analyst Harry Markopolos spotted Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme long before anyone else did, to how Aron Ralston, a mountain climber, figured out how to free himself when his arm became trapped by a boulder for over five days. (This last tale had me shivering; it was a very compelling illustration of the concept of creative desperation.)
Klein extracts instructive patterns from these cases. I left the book inspired to think about how I can create conditions to stimulate connections and give breathing room to contractions, coincidences, and curiosities. (Creative desperation is often accounted for; deadlines seem to always be looming!)
Seeing What Others Don’t offers a compelling framework for understanding the conditions that lead to actionable insights. It’s worth studying, especially by strategic designers and others in roles that call for continuous innovation.
Amazon links on this page are affiliate links. I get a small commission if you make a purchase after following these links.