Think Again
The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know
Book Edition Details
Summary
"Think Again (2021) examines the science behind changing your mind – and persuading others to change theirs. It explores the biases and assumptions that we bring to our decision-making, and outlines how individuals and organizations can build a mindset of lifelong curiosity."
Introduction
Picture yourself standing at the edge of a burning forest, watching elite firefighters make a decision that defies everything they've been trained to do—they drop their tools and run toward the flames instead of away from them. This moment of radical thinking, where survival depends on abandoning expertise, captures the essence of our greatest challenge in an ever-changing world. We live in times that reward quick answers and unwavering confidence, yet the most extraordinary breakthroughs come from those brave enough to question their deepest assumptions. In our rapidly shifting landscape, yesterday's certainties become tomorrow's limitations. The technologies that seemed impossible just decades ago now reshape entire industries, while organizations that once dominated markets disappear because they couldn't adapt their thinking. This exploration reveals the transformative power of intellectual humility—the courage to embrace uncertainty, question our beliefs, and discover joy in being wrong. Through remarkable stories of scientists, leaders, and everyday heroes who learned to think again, we'll uncover how rethinking isn't merely a skill but a superpower that can revolutionize our relationships, careers, and understanding of ourselves. The future belongs not to those who never change their minds, but to those who change them with wisdom and grace.
The Smokejumpers' Dilemma: Why Smart People Get Stuck
Wagner Dodge watched the wildfire racing toward his crew of elite smokejumpers in Mann Gulch, Montana, with flames stretching thirty feet high and moving fast enough to cross two football fields in under a minute. Every instinct screamed for his team to keep running, to fight the fire with their familiar tools and proven techniques. But Dodge did something that baffled his crew—he stopped, pulled out matches, and began lighting the grass around him. "What the hell is the boss doing lighting another fire in front of us?" one smokejumper later recalled. They thought he had lost his mind and refused to follow him into what appeared to be certain death. What the smokejumpers couldn't grasp was that Dodge was creating an escape fire, burning away the fuel that would feed the approaching inferno. He lay down in the charred area and survived as the wildfire raged overhead, while twelve of his highly trained crew perished because they couldn't abandon their well-learned responses quickly enough to embrace a radically different solution. Even more telling, many continued carrying their heavy tools up the hillside, unable to let go of the very instruments that defined their identity as firefighters, even when those tools were slowing their escape. This tragedy reveals a fundamental truth about human expertise: intelligence and training don't guarantee wisdom when circumstances demand revolutionary thinking. The smokejumpers were trapped not by their lack of skill, but by their commitment to methods that had always worked before. We all carry mental tools that once served us brilliantly but may now be weighing us down, and our greatest challenge lies in learning when to drop them and when to light our own escape fires, even when others think we've lost our minds.
Breaking Through Overconfidence: From Mount Stupid to Wise Doubt
Halla Tómasdóttir never imagined she would run for president of Iceland when friends started a petition urging her to enter the race. Her first thought was overwhelming: "Who am I to be president?" She had successfully guided her investment firm through Iceland's devastating financial crisis, but she had no political background. The impostor syndrome felt crushing—like her childhood piano recitals, but magnified a thousand times. Meanwhile, her opponent Davíð Oddsson exuded unshakeable confidence. As Iceland's former prime minister and central bank governor, he had been identified as one of the three people most responsible for the country's bankruptcy, even named by Time magazine as one of the twenty-five people to blame for the global financial crisis. Yet when Oddsson announced his presidential candidacy, he declared with absolute certainty that his "experience and knowledge, which is considerable, could go well with this office." This tale of two candidates illustrates a crucial paradox in human psychology: those who can't often don't know they can't, while those who can frequently doubt that they can. Oddsson had climbed to what psychologists call Mount Stupid—that peak where confidence soars just as competence begins to develop, but before wisdom brings humility. Halla's self-doubt became her secret weapon. Feeling like an impostor motivated her to work harder and smarter, seeking advice from everyone and staying curious about what she didn't know. She ran a positive campaign, used innovative social media strategies, and treated her competitors with respect. On election day, she stunned the country by winning over a quarter of the vote and finishing second, while Oddsson came in fourth with less than fourteen percent. The most successful people aren't those who never doubt themselves, but those who doubt themselves just enough to keep learning and growing.
The Art of Changing Minds: Debates, Prejudice, and Listening
Harish Natarajan, the world's most successful debater, faced an extraordinary opponent in San Francisco—an artificial intelligence called Project Debater. The topic was whether governments should subsidize preschools, and the audience started overwhelmingly in favor. Project Debater had instant access to 400 million articles and could generate fact-filled arguments at lightning speed. Yet by the debate's end, Harish had convinced a significant portion of the audience to reconsider their position, demonstrating that human connection trumps raw data processing. The secret wasn't in what Harish said, but in how he approached the conversation. While Project Debater piled on study after study, Harish focused on just two core arguments. He began by acknowledging areas where he agreed with his opponent, signaling that he was genuinely seeking truth rather than victory. Most importantly, he asked questions that invited the audience to think for themselves rather than simply accepting his conclusions. This principle extends far beyond formal debates into the most challenging conversations we face. When Daryl Davis, a Black musician, sat down with Ku Klux Klan members, he didn't try to demolish their beliefs with facts and logic. Instead, he asked a simple, powerful question: "How can you hate me when you don't even know me?" His genuine curiosity and willingness to listen created space for authentic dialogue. Over time, many of these white supremacists abandoned their hatred and left the KKK, not because Davis preached at them, but because he helped them examine their own assumptions with compassion and patience. The most powerful tool for changing minds isn't argumentation—it's conversation. When we approach disagreements as dances rather than wars, seeking to understand rather than to win, we create possibilities for mutual learning and genuine transformation that can heal even the deepest divisions.
Building Learning Cultures: From NASA's Failures to Better Futures
When astronaut Luca Parmitano felt water accumulating in his helmet during a spacewalk 250 miles above Earth, Mission Control initially dismissed it as a minor issue—probably just a leaky drink bag. They had seen similar problems before without serious consequences, and their experience bred dangerous confidence. But as the water continued to build, covering his eyes and filling his nostrils, Luca found himself in mortal danger, unable to see or breathe properly as he navigated back to the space station in complete darkness. The technical fix was straightforward: replace the faulty component and add safety features. But the deeper problem was cultural. NASA had developed what investigators called "normalization of deviance"—the gradual acceptance of lower standards through repeated exposure to risk. Like the Challenger disaster decades earlier, where O-ring problems were repeatedly waived, the organization had stopped questioning assumptions that seemed to work most of the time. Success had bred overconfidence, while the fear of failure discouraged people from voicing concerns. The transformation required more than new procedures—it demanded a fundamental shift from a performance culture to a learning culture. Ellen Ochoa, who became a NASA leader after the Columbia disaster, began carrying questions in her pocket: "What leads you to that assumption? What are the uncertainties in your analysis? What are the disadvantages of your recommendation?" This created psychological safety where people could voice concerns without fear of retribution, combined with process accountability where decisions were evaluated based on the quality of thinking, not just outcomes. The most resilient organizations aren't those that never fail, but those who learn faster from their failures than their competitors do from their successes. They understand that today's best practices may become tomorrow's limitations, and they build cultures that reward intellectual humility and continuous questioning.
Summary
The journey from rigid thinking to flexible rethinking reveals itself as more than an intellectual exercise—it's a fundamental life skill that determines our capacity for growth, connection, and meaningful contribution to the world. Through the stories of firefighters who couldn't abandon their tools, presidential candidates who embodied different relationships with doubt, debaters who changed minds through questions rather than answers, and organizations that transformed failure into wisdom, we discover that our greatest strength lies not in being right, but in being willing to be wrong. The path forward requires cultivating confident humility—maintaining faith in our ability to learn while questioning our current knowledge. It means building networks of people who care enough to challenge us, creating environments where difficult conversations can flourish, and approaching our careers and relationships as experiments rather than fixed destinations. Most importantly, it means recognizing that in a world of constant change, the ability to think again isn't just an advantage—it's essential for creating the life we truly want to live. When we embrace the joy of being wrong, we open ourselves to possibilities more extraordinary than we ever imagined, and we become the kind of people who light escape fires when others see only danger.
By Adam M. Grant
