13 ways to become an original in your domain
Selected insights from Adam Grant’s book ‘Originals’
Originality involves introducing and advancing an idea that’s relatively unusual within a particular domain, and that has the potential to improve it.
In his book ‘Originals: How Non-conformists Move the World’, Adam Grant tells of how we can all become more original. That is, instead of accepting defaults, we can take a bit of initiative to seek out an option that might be better.
Grant has documented studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, to look for the seeds of creative, moral, and organizational change — and how to overcome barriers that hinder progress.
Here are 13 ways for you, as an individual to generate, recognize, voice and champion new ideas in your domain or status quo:
1. Questioning the defaults
The starting point is curiosity: pondering why the default exists in the first place.
When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people. This awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them’
The drive to succeed and the accompanying fear of failure have held back some of the greatest creators and change agents in history.
We can only imagine how many Wozniaks, Michelangelos, and Kings never pursued, publicized, or promoted their original ideas because they were not dragged or catapulted into the spotlight.
Although we may not all aspire to start our own companies, create a masterpiece, transform Western thought, or lead a civil rights movement, we do have ideas for improving our workplaces, schools, and communities. Sadly, many of us hesitate to take action to promote those ideas.
The last time you had an original idea, what did you do with it?
2. Seek feedback from peers
Social scientists have long known that we tend to be overconfident when we evaluate ourselves.
Overconfidence may be a particularly difficult bias to overcome even if your previous ideas have bombed.
When managers vet novel ideas, they’re in an evaluative mindset. To protect themselves against the risks of a bad bet, they compare the new notion on the table to templates of ideas that have succeeded in the past. When publishing executives passed on Harry Potter, they said it was too long for a children’s book.
Neither test audiences nor managers are ideal judges of creative ideas. They tend to stick too closely to existing prototypes. But there is one group of forecasters that does come close to attaining mastery: fellow creators evaluating one another’s ideas.
They lack the risk-aversion of managers and test audiences; they’re open to seeing the potential in unusual possibilities. At the same time, they have no particular investment in our ideas, which gives them enough distance to offer an honest appraisal and protects against false positives.
3. Quantify the numbers of ideas you generate
“The odds of producing an influential or successful idea are a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.” Dean Simonton
Take a look at these:
Shakespeare: In the span of two decades, he produced 37 plays and 154 sonnets. In the same five-year window he produced three of his popular works — Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello.
Picasso: His collection includes more than 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings, not to mention prints, rugs, and tapestries — only a fraction of which have garnered acclaim.
Maya Angelou: She wrote 165 poems but we know of the classic “Still I Rise”. We remember her moving memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings but she wrote 6 autobiographies.
Einstein: He wrote papers on general and special relativity that transformed physics, but many of his 248 publications had minimal impact.
The best way to get better at judging our ideas is to gather feedback. Put a lot of ideas out there and see which ones are praised and adopted by your target audience
4. Balance your risk portfolio
You have heard of “Entrepreneurs always take risks,” but the whole truth is, “Successful originals take extreme risks in one arena and offset them with extreme caution in another.” In other words, they look before they jump.
Entrepreneurs who kept their day jobs had 33 percent lower odds of failure than those who quit… Risk portfolios explain why people often become original in one part of their lives while remaining quite conventional in others.
John Legend released his first album in 2000 but kept working as a management consultant until 2002
Stephen King worked as a teacher, janitor, and gas station attendant for seven years after writing his first novel Carrie
Director Ava DuVernay made her first three films while working in her day job as a publicist, only pursuing filmmaking full time after working at it for four years and winning multiple awards.
Bill Gates sold a new software program as a sophomore, he waited an entire year before leaving school.
5. Put your worst foot forward
In pitching your ideas start by highlighting your flaws first to the audience. Assuming that the idea has some merit, they will be more aware of its virtues.
Most of us assume that to be persuasive, we ought to emphasize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses. That kind of powerful communication makes sense if the audience is supportive. But when you’re pitching a novel idea or speaking up with a suggestion for change, your audience is likely to be skeptical.
Investors are looking to poke holes in your arguments; managers are hunting for reasons why your suggestion won’t work.
Here’s why you should begin with the flaws of your work:
a) Leading with weaknesses disarms the audience. “Unbridled optimism comes across as salesmanship; it seems dishonest somehow, and as a consequence it’s met with skepticism. Everyone is allergic to the feeling, or suspicious of being sold.”
b) It makes you look smart. People think an amateur can appreciate art, but it takes a professional to critique it. “Even if reviewers loved a book, they felt an obligation to add a paragraph at the end noting where it fell short. According to Griscom, it’s their way of saying, ‘I’m not a chump; I was not totally snowed by this author. I am discerning.’”
c) It makes you more trustworthy. “The job of the investor is to figure out what’s wrong with the company. By telling them what’s wrong with the business model, I’m doing some of the work for them. It established trust,”
d) It leaves audiences with a more favorable assessment of the idea itself, due to a bias in how we process information. “By acknowledging its most serious problems, it’s harder for investors to generate their own ideas about what was wrong with the company. And as they found themselves thinking hard to identify other concerns, they decided the problems weren’t actually that severe.”
6. Make your ideas more familiar
We often under-communicate our ideas because they’re already so familiar to us that we underestimate how much exposure an audience needs to comprehend and buy into them.
If we want people to accept our original ideas, we need to speak up about them, repeatedly. This will make people more comfortable with the unconventional idea.
Exposure does increase the ease of processing. An unfamiliar idea requires more effort to understand. The more we see, hear, and touch it, the more comfortable we become with it, and the less threatening it is.
Also, exposures are more effective when they’re short and mixed in with other already known ideas, to help maintain the audience’s curiosity.
It’s also best to introduce a delay between the presentation of the idea and the evaluation of it, which provides time for it to sink in. If you’re making a suggestion to a boss, you might start with a 30-second elevator pitch during a conversation on Tuesday, revisit it briefly the following Monday, and then ask for feedback at the end of the week.
7. Your audience matters
Instead of seeking out friendly people who share your values, try approaching disagreeable people who share your methods. Your best allies are the people who have a track record of being tough and solving problems with approaches similar to yours.
Research shows that when managers have a track record of challenging the status quo, they tend to be more open to new ideas and less threatened by contributions from others. They care more about making the organization better than about defending it as it stands.
Instead of speaking up to audiences who are highly agreeable, we’re better off targeting suggestions to people with a history of originality.
8. Procrastinate strategically
When you’re generating new ideas, deliberately stop when your progress is incomplete. By taking a break in the middle of your brainstorming or writing process, you’re more likely to engage in divergent thinking and give ideas time to incubate.
Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik demonstrated that people have a better memory for incomplete than complete tasks. Once a task is finished, we stop thinking about it.
Along with providing time to generate novel ideas, procrastination has another benefit: it keeps us open to improvisation. When we plan well in advance, we often stick to the structure we’ve created, closing the door to creative possibilities that might spring into our fields of vision.
Great originals are great procrastinators, but they don’t skip planning altogether. They procrastinate strategically, making gradual progress by testing and refining different possibilities.
9. Be wary of being the first mover
….because it’s often riskier to act early than late.
Being original doesn’t require being first. It just means being different and better.
“Wouldn’t you rather be second or third and see how the guy in first did, and then . . . improve it?” Malcolm Gladwell
According to research, pioneers were about six times more likely to fail than settlers. Even when the pioneers did survive, they only captured an average of 10 percent of the market, compared with 28 percent for settlers.
Moving first is a tactic, not a goal,” Peter Thiel writes in Zero to One; “being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you.”
10. Enemies make better allies than frenemies
Frenemies — people who sometimes support you and sometimes undermine you.
Negative relationships are unpleasant, but they’re predictable: if a colleague consistently undermines you, you can keep your distance and expect the worst. But it takes more emotional energy and coping resources to deal with individuals who are inconsistent.
Our instinct is to sever our bad relationships and salvage the ambivalent ones. But the evidence suggests we ought to do the opposite: cut our frenemies and attempt to convert our enemies… Our best allies aren’t the people who have supported us all along. They’re the ones who started out against us and then came around to our side.
Here’s why you should convert your enemies:
a) We find it more rewarding when someone’s initially negative feelings toward us gradually become positive than if that person’s feelings for us were entirely positive all along.
b) To avoid the cognitive dissonance of changing their minds yet again, they’ll be especially motivated to maintain a positive relationship.
c) They are the most effective at persuading others to join our movements. They can marshal better arguments on our behalf, because they understand the doubts and misgivings of resisters and fence-sitters.
11. Immerse yourself in a new domain
Originality increases when you broaden your frame of reference.
One approach is to learn a new craft, like the Nobel Prize–winning scientists who expanded their creative repertoires by taking up painting, piano, dance, or poetry. Another strategy is to try a job rotation: get trained to do a position that requires a new base of knowledge and skills. A third option is to learn about a different culture, like the fashion designers who became more innovative when they lived in foreign countries that were very different from their own.
You don’t need to go abroad to diversify your experience; you can immerse yourself in the culture and customs of a new environment simply by reading about it.
12. Don’t try to calm down
It’s normal to feel fear or a little anxiety when you want to challenge the status quo, so how do you manage your fear? The popular recommendation to this question is “Try to relax and calm down.” Yet according to research, it isn’t the best one.
Fear is an intense emotion: You can feel your heart pumping and your blood coursing. In that state, trying to relax is like slamming on the brakes when a car is going 80 miles per hour. The vehicle still has momentum. Rather than trying to suppress a strong emotion, it’s easier to convert it into a different emotion — one that’s equally intense, but propels us to step on the gas.
It’s easier to turn anxiety into intense positive emotions like interest and enthusiasm. Think about the reasons you’re eager to challenge the status quo, and the positive outcomes that might result.
13. Realize there’s strength in small numbers
Flying solo with an opinion can make even a committed original fearful enough to conform to the majority. Even having a single ally is enough to dramatically increase your will to act.
As entrepreneur Derek Sivers put it, “The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.”
Find one person who believes in your vision and begin tackling the problem together.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead
Ultimately, the people who choose to champion originality are the ones who propel us forward…. They feel the same fear, the same doubt, as the rest of us. What sets them apart is that they take action anyway. They know in their hearts that failing would yield less regret than failing to try.
