ADAM GRANT
ORIGINALS
EPISODE 76
Continuing our series on Adam Grant, Mike and Mark reach into Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (buy on Amazon) to uncover what does it take to be a truly original thinker.
Originals is about how to champion new ideas and fight groupthink. 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.
SHOW OUTLINE
INTRO
Anyone can be an original thinker - it’s a free choice, so let’s be inspired
Who Can Be An Original
TIPS ON HOW TO CULTIVATE ORIGINALS IN BUSINESS
Sometimes it’s about quantity, not always quality. Don’t fall in love with just your first idea
Have lots of ideas, not just a few big ones
Use your peers to avoid subjectivity influencing your own ideas
Judge ideas in a creative mind
It’s not always about now-now-now! How to spot - and encourage - productive, creative procrastination
Getting things done_ creative and productive procrastination
Tinker, experiment and go down the rabbit holes - and try something new!
Fortune favors the curious - Insights for Entrepreneurs
OUTRO
Originals behave in particular ways - and it’s ok to be different
3 Surprising habits of Original Thinkers
Take the Quiz!
https://www.adamgrant.net/originalstest
TRANSCRIPT
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Mike Parsons: Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It is a tremendous episode 76 I'm your cohost Mike Parsons, and as always, I'm joined by none other than mr Mark Freeland. Good morning, Mr. Mark.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: Good morning, mr Mike. It is a fantastic Autumnal, sunny bright day in Sydney, isn't it?
Mike Parsons: And we Mark, we're about to cast some super sunshine onto our creative minds.
Tell us where do we go on this adventure in learning from innovators
Mark Pearson-Freeland: while learning, continuing our learning with Mr. Adam Grant. This week we're going to be diving into his book originals. How nonconformists move the world, which is a fantastic book. And it, it's so interesting to dive into the wealth of insights and actually tips productive and proactive tips to, uh, work and build new
Mike Parsons: ideas,
Mark Pearson-Freeland: uh, challenge ourselves back against, uh, outdated traditions as he says, a fascinating large book full of great things.
Mike Parsons: What did you think of? Well, yeah, I think we're going to shadow some myths today, but what's so nice about what we've got in this second installment of the Adam Grant series is something that is both inspirational and insanely practical. If you want to think originally, if you want to have great ideas, um, he is going to disrupt us, uh, over this next hour.
He's going to give us a ton of. Not only practical, um, practical tips, but he's gonna, he's gonna open us up to thinking different about thinking. But before we go there, Mark, we're almost at the hundred reviews and re ratings. Mark w the podcast is flying all around the planet these days. What I want to ask all of our listeners to do is to jump into their little podcast app and give us a rating even better if you can, if you've got the time, give us a review because this is how other people discover our show and how they can enjoy the journey of learning from innovators.
But Mark, that's not the only thing we would like all of our listeners to do.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: We would love all of our listeners to go and check out a humble little place online called moonshots.io. That is our, our house or our observatory. As we do, we stand with the moon and all the innovators around us. This is where we house everything from upcoming episodes, our archive of 75 so far, and all of the show notes and great links to additional documents like the Netflix culture deck.
For when we were talking about Reed Hastings
Mike Parsons: for it. Yes, yes.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: There is a plethora of information online and we'd love everybody to go and
Mike Parsons: check it out. Exactly. You can dig up any of the past shows or the great show notes, all of the things, the tools, the inspiration, the practical tips to become just a bit more like some of these amazing people like Reed Hastings.
Michelle Obama. But today we dive into the second installment of Adam Grant, and we are diving into his thinking around his book, originals. And we, again, to set you up right now for one of his most disruptive ideas when he thinks and considers the question, who can be. An original thinker.
Adam Grant: I think a lot of us assume that original thinkers are just a separate class of people right there.
The Steve jobs is of technology. They're the people we admire as just cut from a different cloth than the rest of us. So they might be entrepreneurs or scientists or artists, but they're, they're visionaries, right? They were born that way. That's a great idea. With one tiny wrinkle, it isn't true. So it turns out that anyone can become more original, right?
Originality is not a fixed trait. It's a free choice and it's a choice we make. Anytime we say, look, there's a default way of doing things and then start to question whether that default makes sense. Right? One of the most dangerous sentences in the English language is this is the way we've always done things and we can all be original.
If we just questioned that, right, and say maybe the way that we've always done things doesn't make sense or doesn't make sense anymore, or is not the most effective or worthwhile way to do this. And so, you know, I really see this course as being about helping anyone who is interested in solving problems in the world, figure out how to bring more creativity and more change to those problems.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: It's a free choice. I love that there's a, this is a really central to the idea, I think of Adam's book, originals. It's all about challenging this default, or perhaps not necessarily challenging intentionally, but not accepting the default. So to be an original, and again, we'll come on to lots and lots of great clips today
Mike Parsons: as we go through the,
Mark Pearson-Freeland: but for me, that's a pretty central pin.
Within defining yourself as an original thinker. You aren't just going along with the default setting, whether it's, you know, uh, pre-installed software,
Mike Parsons: web
Mark Pearson-Freeland: browsers, and so on or not, you're making that choice yourself. You're making that choice at any time and you're choosing to look at, uh, a challenge or a thing in your life or things around us and think, okay, well maybe it could be better.
Mike Parsons: I couldn't agree more. My, the, the, the inspiration that lies in this advice is Adam Grant is saying, you have the choice. You have the mindset and the capability of questioning the status quo of challenging the status quo and original thinking and great ideas come from the first step, which is to ask why should that be.
That kind of sucks. And what's so beautiful about this is if you look specifically at people that we've had on this show, there are many people who have actually challenged the status quo with the original thinking. I mean, Elon Musk is the easy one, but actually, if you step back, and even if you look at Richard Branson, he looks at solutions, whether it's music travel.
Banks and says, well, this kind of sucks. Why should it be like that? And he goes around asking why. And I think that if we can truly embody this idea that it is a choice to think differently, it is a choice to think originally everything's on the table, everything's up for discussion. And what's interesting is his story in this clip was, was reminding us that we have the permission to do it.
Because we forget. We just accept the status quo. We forget to challenge it for years and years and years, everybody accepted crappy cab services all around the world, maybe with the exception of London, and then Uber came along. You know, bookstores were selling books for hundreds of years, and then someone came along and said, let's do it differently and created Amazon.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: I think
Mike Parsons: how inspiring is Adam's thought? I think it challenges us to go out and to challenge the world, to question the world. And I think this is a start of a great journey. His, he's insane to us. Go out and be curious. Ask. Why I think theirs is so good for those of us that are listening to this and need a little bit of a, an espresso shot.
I mean, it will need a little bit of a turbocharge to go out there and ask why. I think here is the inspiration. I totally agree.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: And you know, choices as you say. It's empowering, you know, to know that you don't just have to have to accept not being an original thinker. You know, it's very, very easy to think, Oh, well, this genius is reserved for people like Branson or Elon Musk or Steve jobs.
They're the original, not me. I'm just doing my. Job day to day, but actually when I start to think, Hey, no, but if I've got the choice to go and be an original thinker, I suddenly feel empowered and actually more confident to maybe go and try things
Mike Parsons: that I haven't done before.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: Maybe look at challenges in a different way.
I think it's, I
Mike Parsons: think it's great. That's the perf. That is the perfect thought to get us to this next clip because in this next clip. What he effectively is doing is saying, okay, alright, so you, you know, you want to think differently. Don't for a minute think that this is a question of having one idea. And that's the one, in fact, he's got quite a contrarian thought built out of lots and lots of research, which really, really sets us up for the following idea.
It's not about the quality, it's about the quantity.
Adam Grant: I always thought that like the great originals and history of creative musicians, artists, scientists, and were reasonably business thinkers and leaders, I thought what they did was they had a couple of big ideas and then they refine them to perfection.
And the data tell the opposite story that the great original throughout history did not actually have few ideas. They had tons of them and way more than most of their peers. So if you look at musicians, for example, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven. Their average hit rate is not any higher than many composers who never heard of.
What differentiates them is they just came up with a lot more ideas. So 600 over a thousand and a couple of those cases. And the reason for that is you have to generate a lot of variety to be original. And
Mike Parsons: if you just come up with a few ideas, your first few are
Adam Grant: usually the most obvious.
Mike Parsons: You've got to rule
Adam Grant: out the familiar in order to get to the novel.
But most people never do that. They fall in love with their first idea, or they end up just questioning whether they have the ability to come up with more ideas. And so I think one of the things we need to be doing more often as leaders is encouraging people to generate lots and lots of ideas, knowing that you're going to spew out a lot of garbage in order to get greatness.
Mike Parsons: Oh,
Mark Pearson-Freeland: such a challenging idea. It's really, really challenging. What we all. Accept nowadays as the norm, you know, quality is really what we're all striving for. We're striving rather than, you know, wasting our time, creating lots of ideas. We should actually focus on one business product
Mike Parsons: or concept
Mark Pearson-Freeland: and refine it, work on it, tweak it, and so on.
But actually what Adam's saying here is the opposite, which is go like crazy. Make as much as you can. Prototype. And create as much as your hands can do, and then gradually you'll get out the weaker ones
Mike Parsons: initially,
Mark Pearson-Freeland: and then you'll find that perfect product down the line once you've iterated and prototypes a lot of ideas.
Mike Parsons: I think that's great. I totally relate to that. Like don't you find that when you're sitting down and doing some sort of brainstorming and creative thinking exercise, the first few ideas are always, let's be honest, they're kind of warm up backs. Yeah. But what happens is you get a ton up on the board and then you start saying, Oh, there's is sort of a pattern to the ones that you're drawn to when you start combining and remixing them, and it's not only, it's not until you've like warmed up for 20 minutes.
Then the really. Profound insights start to come in the ideas because you're embodied in it. And so he's like saying, go for it. Go for a lot of ideas. But what, what he suggested there that I really want to pull out is he's telling us to. Try a lot of different ideas, not just conceptual ideas, but actually make them happen.
Because in the book he referenced, you know, great artists and musicians, you'll actually find that it's the most prolific ones are the most successful he uses. Picasso is an example where what you don't realize about Picasso is he had a one over 1,800. Paintings over 2,800 ceramics and 1200 sculptures and wait for this.
This is not a fudge. 12,000 drawings.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: Talk about a production machine.
Mike Parsons: Be prolific in your ideas and your work. And in the first clip, he was giving us permission to think differently. I feel like the takeout for us, Mark, he was giving us permission to fail. Try. Don't be so precious with your ideas.
Otherwise the idea is going to sit in a cupboard somewhere and you go in and you Polish it a bit and then put it away. He's, I think he's celebrating this idea of get it out there, fail fast, learn fast, be prolific, and then the mastery. Or, you know, if we talk about ideas, the big idea will come. So if you think about where you're at, Mark, do you feel like your biggest blocker is the permission to challenge the status quo?
Or is your biggest challenge, uh, to be prolific?
Mark Pearson-Freeland: I think for me, my biggest challenge is accepting this permission to challenge the norm. Hmm. You know? So to have this permission to, uh, go against maybe what I assume would be the right answer, perhaps wedded in, yeah. This idea of coming up with the. Key idea first.
You know, I have a tendency to try and deliver things almost as quickly as I can, and then ref perhaps reflects backwards and think,
Mike Parsons: Oh, but was that
Mark Pearson-Freeland: the best it could be? So I, I feel as though I'm maybe towing the line of what Adam's trying to say, but my problem for me is that then I would deliver maybe those first couple of ideas that Adam's saying aren't going to be the strongest.
Mike Parsons: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, the way I process that Mark is my experience is that my best ideas of those, uh, where I just. Spew a lot out, but also to your point there, take some time with them. Don't, don't, don't rush them because your first idea is often not your best. And I, I think this is starting to create a framework for us because he's saying, yes, go for it.
Challenge the status quo and don't be too precious when you do it. Just have a, have a whole bunch of ideas and really blitz it. And I think with those two in mind, you can feel that you've got now got a body of work to judge, to question, to evaluate. You've got a ton of ideas on the board then, and that's already a breakthrough for all of us, isn't it?
Mark Pearson-Freeland: Yeah, it really is. So bearing in mind those two approaches, I think the next clip that we're going to listen to is Adam suggesting to us,
Mike Parsons: if you
Mark Pearson-Freeland: are with the right mindset. Cultivating this behavior within the business and you've got people thinking the right way, they've got the permission to challenge and the permission to essentially fail.
How do they then be able to judge the ideas that are created eventually in a good non subjective
Mike Parsons: way? So
Adam Grant: Harry Potter got rejected by publishers
Mike Parsons: because it was too long. Who would read a children's book? That was
Adam Grant: hundreds and hundreds of pages, but that's not the right way to evaluate an original idea.
What you want to do is ask, is this going to appeal to the audience as opposed to, is this similar to what's come before? So who do you turn to if you can't trust yourself and you can't rely on your managers who tend to be a little bit risk averse peers, fellow creators.
Mike Parsons: There's
Adam Grant: an amazing study by Justin Berg, a Stanford professor who looks at circus performances, think circus LA.
So he collects all these original acts done by different kinds of circus artists. Jugglers. Dancers, acrobats, and he asked people to evaluate their own performances. And then he asked the managers to evaluate them as well. And then he has performers judge each other's videos. And sure enough. People are horrible at judging their own.
Managers tend to be
Mike Parsons: way too
Adam Grant: close to the most novel acts, and the best forecasters are the performers judging each other's performances. When we need to do to become better at judging ideas is we need to teach ourselves to think more like creators. So the way that Justin does this is he has people generate a few ideas of their own right before they evaluate somebody else's ideas.
And being in that mindset of generating new possibilities and thinking creatively actually increases your openness. To novel performances.
Mike Parsons: Woo. Yeah, so I think what I take from this Mark is that feeling of don't always go to your manager, to your boss with your ideas, but first, seek out feedback from people that are in.
Your environment, your peers as being a really good, not any, uh, give us and providers of feedback. But I think they can help you make your idea go from good to great. So then you can take it in a much more complete and in a much more solid fashion to all of those key stakeholders that you need to go to.
And I think when I, when I processed this, what I witnessed a lot is people actually reluctant. To, to share their ideas. The classic one for me is people saying, I'm not going to tell you my idea unless you sign an NDA. And anybody who's got any experience at all knows that you can have a million ideas and share them, but it's all about executing a business idea.
And if you are truly sensing and feeling how to build a business. Then the more people you get excited about your idea, the more fortunate that comes your way. And so I, I think this third step is seek out contribution and feedback from those around you don't hoard your idea. Don't be guiding it.
Jealously. What did you get out of this idea of finding the right. Peers, uh, to, to help build your ideas. Mark.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: Well, you know, similar to the last two clips were saying, the first one was this sort of permission to challenge. Second one was, you know, Adam telling us there is, you have the permission to fail.
Like you say with this one, it's the permission to go and seek, um. Collaborate, co-creators and collaborators to help you further the idea. For me, I love
Mike Parsons: to
Mark Pearson-Freeland: get to a point with a product or a
Mike Parsons: project
Mark Pearson-Freeland: and then try to take somebody through it because I believe that by, and this is especially true, actually, I find when I have a challenge and by challenge, I'm referring to a problem, a blocker.
Mike Parsons: Once
Mark Pearson-Freeland: I raise that blocker or once I try to describe my. Personal issue with it, the personal challenge or grating or abrasion with it. I sometimes find that I figured out the answer as I'm describing the problem. Oh
Mike Parsons: yeah. Do you know, are you saying, are you saying that experience is, as you're actually sharing the idea, and actually I did start coming to, literally, as you're talking.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: Correct. Exactly. So as soon as you. Uh, engage those parts of your brain and try to eloquently describe your idea, or perhaps it's the challenge. Like I say, in a, in a funny sort of way, your brain kicks into overdrive and it almost answers that question or that challenge as you were describing it once your brain is starting to put that jigsaw together.
So I'm trying to tell you the idea. Suddenly it clicks and I can see the big, wider picture. And that's where I see real value in what Adam's saying here, which is get your peers to weigh in. They'll help you judge that idea without, uh, your own personal, personal, subjective opinion. Um, spoiling it. You know, they have fresh eyes.
There's another phrase.
Mike Parsons: I love that, a fresh set of eyes on your idea. And, um, we're sort of, you know, really now starting to build some of those foundational basics in, in how we can. How we can really give ourselves permission to think originally. And knowing that it takes time. It takes effort, it takes collaboration, it takes volume, it takes a real lot of volume.
Um, and the interesting thing when I think about this is that, um. Giving your permission just to let any idea come out. It almost blows off the cobwebs and then you can just produce, and then pretty soon you build a rhythm of your ideas as you type them or write them or sketch them, and then go take the best ones, uh, to your peers and get their feedback and, and see that as a building exercise to go forward.
Again. Hmm. I, I, I really, I think we've, we've a Pat on the back to ourselves. I really like the flow that we've got here. It's almost like we're really going through a step by step guide to get the very best of Adam Grant's thinking from, from originals, but might before we go into the second half of the show.
I mean, we've got to. Uh, we've got to say a big thank you to all the people that have, uh, been reviewing, uh, the show. Um, we really do appreciate it. We also want to give a big shout out because we've popped up, um, in, uh, all sorts of different wonderful places in the world. Um, so just check out this Mark.
We've popped up, um, in the, in. We're looking at the top hundred charts on charitable, and we've popped in, uh, on, uh, the top charts for the Netherlands, for entrepreneurship, Austria, uh, South Africa where new and hungry, the UAE. I mean, how cool is this Mark? I mean, who would have thought that learning from innovators.
Would be a message that people all around the world are keen to hear, to understand, to help make the very best version of themselves. It's super inspiring, isn't it?
Mark Pearson-Freeland: Well, it is. It's, it's so inspiring. When we sit back and we can see this, this growth and this listenership of all of you listeners, uh, checking out what we're recording every week, and it's fantastic when we start to see that reflected in.
Charts and appearances and so on because it just shows that it is a global conversation. There is a dialogue. Even though we're recording into our mix, there is this dialogue and this desire in the world to learn from these inspiring individuals and innovators. You know, that's, we to get a kick out of it.
Glad that all of our listeners are too, which is fantastic.
Mike Parsons: So I've got a bit of an idea to pitch tomorrow before we go out and do a three part series on Gary vantage Vanderchuck I'm thinking if we want to think about mindsets and what we can learn from innovators, I want to throw out this question to you and our audience about doing a special episode a Michael Jordan.
One of the greatest athletes to ever live because what has been crazy as I've enjoyed the last dance, what is really reminded me of is that. More than anything. It was his mindset that made him so great. And I think there's a lot to learn there. So I wonder, Mark, what do you think and what do you, our listeners think?
Do you want to, uh, Mark and I to dive into the world of Michael Jordan, uh, because there's a lot there, but Mark, uh, have you got your Nike zone? Would you be ready to dive into Michael Jordan? What do you think?
Mark Pearson-Freeland: I do have my Nike's on, actually. Yeah, you're right. I'll tell you what I think. I, I've, I'm fully behind this idea because it just proves that you don't have to be wedded in business to be an innovator.
That's the whole of moonshots. We've covered so many individuals over there over the last couple of years. Lady Gaga, you know a lot of people in the music space. We've covered a lot of people in investors and business and so on, but I'd love to actually go and explore Michael Jordan and what he has to say that the mindset and the discipline that keeps, and that kept him going for so long in the Chicago bulls and all of his professional career, it is a source of inspiration.
Mike Parsons: It really is. So I want you out. Listeners, send us an email. Mark, what is our famous moonshots email address? Hello,
Mark Pearson-Freeland: at moonshots.io
Mike Parsons: tell us what you think Michael Jordan show yes or no. If we get enough positive feedback from you, our listeners, we will do a quick segue before we get to GaryVee and go deep into the world of Michael.
Jordan, let's get it on. Fantastic. Okay. We got three more clips and now we're going to get into the finessing, the, some of the fine tuning you can do. If you build on those first three eight is have you've got permission to think differently, have lots of ideas, seek the feedback of your peers. Now we're going to go into some of the finer points of original thinking.
So let's have a listen to Adam Grant talking about how procrastination can play a role in original thinking.
Adam Grant: There's a very fine line between creative procrastination and laziness. And I think the biggest difference is about why you're putting off or delaying your work. So if you're putting off work because it's really difficult and unpleasant, and there are many other things that you would enjoy doing.
That's rarely productive
Mike Parsons: when
Adam Grant: procrastination is productive though, is when you say, I'm working on something and it's hard and I haven't figured it out yet, and I need some time to incubate, and then you're focusing on other things that hope you're doing productively, and then when you come back to the problem you're trying to solve creatively.
You may have some new ideas.
Mike Parsons: I think the other
Adam Grant: big difference here is if you think about start times and finish times on tasks, what I've noticed over and over again in the data that colleagues and I have collected is that, um, great original thinkers are often quick to start, but slow to finish. So they, they dive into a problem early.
They're excited to make progress on it. But they don't
Mike Parsons: rush to complete it
Adam Grant: because they know that oftentimes the best ideas will come later when they've really had some time to reflect. And so I would say one good strategy to follow is to try to make a bunch of progress early. And then I actually do this when I write, I will send a first draft.
Of an article or a book chapter to somebody who I know is really slow in giving feedback.
Mike Parsons: And so then I have to wait three weeks or so,
Adam Grant: and by the time I get the feedback, I have a ton of new perspectives and I ended up rewriting much of it anyway, even if the feedback didn't tell me Tim. So I'm delaying the completion of tasks is a great way to make procrastination a little more productive.
Yeah, there is such a thing as being a creative procrastinator, and I do find that people who procrastinate sometimes are more likely to have original ideas than people who do everything early or everything at the last minute. There's that. There's a very effective, productive middle ground.
Mike Parsons: So
Mark Pearson-Freeland: Adam, once again, challenging the norm and the best bit is he has the data to back him up.
Mike Parsons: Yeah. And isn't this fascinating that him Bernay Brown County, Newport, Jim Collins. They are all so crisp in their thinking. Their thinking is original because they do the work on the data. Just, I mean, that's a total aside that distract me there.
But Mark, he's telling you, start the work, start the idea early. I think that is super powerful, don't you? Well,
Mark Pearson-Freeland: isn't it great? Yeah. I mean it reinforces the old childhood behavior of when you're sitting in front of an exam. You read all of the questions first, everything you don't just exactly, you take a breath because actually, and this is true, whether it's maths, healthcare, whatever, I know plenty of people who've done it in their lives.
Mike Parsons: When
Mark Pearson-Freeland: you come back to a problem that you've already read, sometimes your brains had time to sort of percolate and it's come up with the answer. So. You know, building on what Adam was teaching us earlier
Mike Parsons: about pushing hard
Mark Pearson-Freeland: early, getting all the, all the, you know, half baked ideas out of the way early and then reinforcing it here by saying, make that early progress and evolve based on what you've, I guess, learned up to that point.
And don't be afraid to have that moment
Mike Parsons: of letting it. You know,
Mark Pearson-Freeland: sit around and stir inside your brain. You know, I like this creative procrastination idea of taking stock, coming back to it, maybe even sleeping on it. We discussed that before on the show. I get quite a lot from Adam here.
Mike Parsons: What are you thinking mind?
So I'm just trying to think of how this relates to some of my practices because I've had this same discovery Mart like. For example, if I need to produce the big strategic recommendation to a client, if I need to make a masterclass, if I need to write a really deep extensive case study, um, on an innovative company, um, I'm very conscious of what I call the one week role.
If the piece of work is due in one week, I need to be able to write some sort of outline. A week before the deadline and what you remember is, and you'll have experienced even recently, I will actually share with you an outline of what I'm thinking, and it may be 10 bullet points. It's sort of just a flow of my idea or my argument.
Um. And it's sort of a rough model, but if I make that breakthrough a week before it's due, that gives me enough time to kind of let things, you and I can fill out those ideas. And the crazy thing is usually that outline is about 80% what ends up being the outline in the final product. But the real difference is all of the.
What's really interesting is when I don't have that time, I always feel I'm less confident in what I've written or produced because if I only started working on it two days before, it was jus invariably, I feel like it's a bit rushed. The quality of the thinking is a bit rushed. I mean, how do you relate to it when he says stop early?
I mean, that's how I do it. How do you think about. This starting early.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: I like to start early because my brain is still engaged in that camp. You know, if I'm, if I'm distilling your process, which you're right, I, I've experienced many times, what you create is our foundation, our skeleton, based on. That information, that meeting, that telephone, video conference, whatever it might be.
And what I like about the process here that we're discussing is once you've got that skeleton, it's a lot easier to fatten
Mike Parsons: it up.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: To add to the muscle and the fat and the flesh around it as it's had time to, to exist. You've had time to reflect on data on the market, on the client themselves, and actually it can only get better because you've already got that foundation in which is providing the grounding of what you're going to build upon.
So for me, I like to get everything. I like to do a bit of a brain dump. After. I've spoken to a client after I've done, let's say, a week of research, we're doing some in market research right now with one of our clients, and at the end of each week or at the end of each milestone, I'll make sure to scribble everything that's in my head down on paper.
So then when I go into the next week or so. I haven't forgotten anything. You know, fundamentally, I think when there's a lot of plates spinning, you have the danger of dropping some. So I like to ensure that I, no myself, I'm not going to drop anything because I have written things down and I've had that skeleton existing somewhere and it can only,
Mike Parsons: it's so true.
The, the, if I was to. Implore you and all of our listeners, I cannot tell you when, how important it is for me to have that time to work on an idea. And I really feel like, um, when, you know, when people come to us and say, Oh, listen, we need this in, in, uh. And I'm fairly sure like short timeline, my, my gut reaction is I just know that the idea and the thinking and the work will just not be as good as it could be if I don't follow the one week role.
And so I hope that. For all of our listeners, if they know, if you know you've got to deliver something, don't start at the day before because before you know it, your chasing, you're just chasing but you, you're just not doing a service to all of your potential creativity. If you just don't give yourself time to think, to wonder and to be curious and a big part of.
That finessing is tinkering. And actually we've got this great clip, uh, from, uh, Adam Grant that really speaks to curiosity. So let's have a listen to Adam Grant talking about fortune favoring the curious.
Adam Grant: One of the most common phrases I hear from entrepreneurs is, it's too
Mike Parsons: late. I'm too old.
Adam Grant: I should have started my business a long time ago.
And you know, I'm just not a young kid anymore. Can't do it. And I love to come back and say, actually, if you look at the data, you were completely wrong on this. The average patent applicant is 47 the most valuable patents often come from people who are over 55 the way that we sustain our creativity over time is not through all of a sudden having a vision.
And then. Immediately knowing what to do with it.
Mike Parsons: It's through tinkering,
Adam Grant: experimenting, going down rabbit holes and trying ideas that we never would have considered before. If you think about it, right? A lot of creativity comes from moments that are the opposite of deja VU. There's actually a name for them.
They're called a moonshot day
Mike Parsons: and
Adam Grant: day. Is that that feeling that we all love, where you look at something you've seen many times before, but suddenly you recognize it with fresh eyes and we all need to have more of those. And the easiest way to have them is to immerse yourself. For a new domain,
Mike Parsons: even the
Adam Grant: hobbies you pick up can really matter.
So if you look at Nobel prize winning sciences, you will find that Nobel prize winners are significantly more likely to have artistic hobbies than their peers. And those seem to play a role in breakthrough insights and innovations. In Galileo, first astronomer to spot mountains on the moon, but not the first astronomer to look through a telescope and see those exact images.
It was just the first one to recognize them,
Mike Parsons: why
Adam Grant: he was trained in a drawing technique that involved the use of shading to represent changes in elevation. And when he saw different dark and light spots in the moon, he realized those had to be admitted.
Mike Parsons: So
Adam Grant: just pursuing a hobby that's a little bit outside of your comfort zone can often
Mike Parsons: give you a new
Adam Grant: lens for seeing and that can help you become more creative.
However old you are.
Mike Parsons: Woo.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: I genuinely feel like I want to go and run around the office after,
Mike Parsons: after hearing that little clip. Can't you feel like you just want to get like a, a Taisha with Volusia day? And across the top. I think Adam's like totally into a bit of day. But Mark, how crazy was that Galileo story?
Mark Pearson-Freeland: It's again, what I love about Adam is all of these great stories all backed up by data, you know? And then he think I'm really getting, especially from that clip that is actually, and the reason why I want to run around the office. It kind of feels like relief. I think when you are surrounded by culture and media and incredible innovators like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg, all these individuals who have cracked things and you know they are mind-blowingly well known around the world.
You almost think, ah, I'm too old for it now. I'm 32. Well, you know, what have I done? And actually what's nice, I know why I didn't feel like that much. For the listeners who do and it, what's nice about it, Adam, is he saying, look, the most valuable patterns that people have had are often when you're over 55 years old, because you've that time becoming an expert in, in your, in your particular field, perhaps.
But also you've had time to experiment, but also pick up hobbies. And that for me is the, is the really inspiring bit and, and it's just fun. You know, it reminds us that, yes, you can pick up hobbies if you feel like you want that bit of variety. But what Adam's proving here, again through data is the best way
Mike Parsons: to.
You
Mark Pearson-Freeland: know, cultivate this. They're successful. Uh, gene, shall we say?
Mike Parsons: He's
Mark Pearson-Freeland: by experimenting and seeing things with fresh eyes
Mike Parsons: our day. Yeah. It's, it's a reminder that, you know, this classic concept of the Renaissance man, the Renaissance woman who is both full and complete in arts and sciences, are those that will thrive the most because they have such a rich.
Set of experiences and mental models to draw upon in order to apply to any problem. And, um, I just, I just find it really, uh, inspiring to think that, you know, the average Nobel prize winner is, um, like 30% more likely to, to have a musical and artistic pursuit. I mean, there are all of these real data points that prove to.
That, you know, this crazy, uh, you know, original thinking is really sourced from folks that are tinkering and experimenting both in and outside of the problem area that they're putting their attention to. And, um. It. It really, um, is a reminder not to sit here and think, Oh, I'd really like to try sculpture, um, uh, drawing, um, music singing.
Yoga, whatever it is, don't just think it. Go out and do it. I think that's the call to action, isn't it? Oh, 100%
Mark Pearson-Freeland: it's not just, um, go and try because you want to instead of, I think what Adam's saying is God and try because there's any in a benefit in every aspect of your life. And if anybody is listening and thinking, Oh yeah, I really should go and pick up that life drawing class, now's the time to go and do it.
Adam's telling you,
Mike Parsons: let's go. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, it gets us, uh, to, uh, what I'm gonna, uh, uh, label as the most caffeinated clip that we have from Adam Grant. He, this final clip is a him on an absolute tear. And the reason that we've left this one to last is this is him in his most. Positive mindset possible, but he's totally energized.
And what he's going to do in this last and final clip is really pieced together his whole idea around original thinking. And this is the chance for everybody listening to the show to sit back and to really take in what he has to give us. Because in a knowledge economy, ideas are everything. And he. Is giving us the chance to be original thinkers, to be agents of change.
So let's get into the final clip. The very last clip of Adam Grant.
Adam Grant: I've been studying people that I come to call originals, originals or nonconformists people who not only have
Mike Parsons: new ideas,
Adam Grant: but take action to champion them.
Mike Parsons: I want to show you today three things I've learned.
Adam Grant: About recognizing originals and becoming a little bit more like them.
I had a student named GA who came to me and said, I have my most creative ideas when I'm procrastinating. So I challenged her to get some data. She goes into a bunch of companies. She has people to fill out surveys about how often they procrastinate. Then she gets their bosses to rate how creative and innovative they are.
Here are results. You actually do see
Mike Parsons: that the people who wait till the last
Adam Grant: minute don't have any new ideas, and on the flip side, the people who raised in are in such a frenzy of anxiety that they don't have original thoughts either. There's a sweet spot where original seem to live. Why is
Mike Parsons: this.
Adam Grant: To find out.
We ask people to generate new business ideas and some of them are asked to do the task right away. Others we randomly assigned to procrastinate by dangling Minesweeper in front of them for either five or 10 minutes. The moderate procrastinators are 16% more creative than the other two
Mike Parsons: grips.
Adam Grant: Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas. A lot of great originals in history were procrastinators. What about Martin Luther King jr he's sitting in the audience waiting for his turn to go on stage and he is still scribbling notes and crossing out lines. Where you see with a lot of great originals is that they are quick to start, but they're slow to finish.
Look at Google waiting for years after AltaVista and Yahoo.
Mike Parsons: Look at Facebook
Adam Grant: winning to build a social network until after my space to be original. You don't
Mike Parsons: have to be first. You just have
Adam Grant: to be different and better. A lot of original people look confident, but behind the scenes they feel the same fear and doubt that the rest of us do.
They just manage it differently. This is a depiction of how the creative process works for most of us.
Mike Parsons: The key to being original
Adam Grant: instead of saying, I'm crap. You say them just not there yet. Volusia days. When you look at something you've seen many times before and all of a sudden see it with fresh eyes.
Mike Parsons: It's a screenwriter
Adam Grant: who looks at a movie
Mike Parsons: script.
Adam Grant: They can't get the green light for more than half a century. Jennifer Lee rewrites the first act, reinvents the villain as a tortured hero and frozen becomes the most successful animated movie ever. When you feel doubt, don't let it
Mike Parsons: go. The things we wish we could redo.
Adam Grant: If you look at the science.
Mike Parsons: Are the chances
Adam Grant: not taken. Elon Musk told me recently he didn't expect Tesla to succeed,
Mike Parsons: but it was
Adam Grant: too important not to try. The greatest originals are the ones who failed the most because they're the ones who try the
Mike Parsons: most. Take classical composers the best
Adam Grant: of the best. Why does some of them get more pages in encyclopedias than others?
One of the best predictors is the sheer volume of compositions that they generate.
Mike Parsons: The more output you churn out, the
Adam Grant: more variety you get, and the better your chances of stumbling on something truly original. If we want to be more original, we have to generate more ideas. Look, being original is not easy, but I have no doubt about this.
It's the best way to improve the world around us. Thank you.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: And thank you, Adam Grant. You're right. Caffeinated clip, but it's so meaty.
Mike Parsons: So yeah, it was like he was sitting there and he says, I'll just summarize the whole book for Mark and wraps. Really short.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: We could spend an entire episode around that one for it, actually.
Mike Parsons: Oh my gosh. But for me, you know, we've talked about some of the platform that he created at the beginning of the show with you've got permission to think differently, have a lot of ideas. Seek out your peers. Um, and then we had some refinements. Um, you know, take your time, start early, tinker away. But for me, I really love this idea of in that clip he gave just a little nudge to an idea.
If you don't have to be the first just better. And I think that's really, really powerful. That often there are lots of ideas. There were lots of attempts at doing Facebook before Facebook happened. Um, so Apple is the King of, of not being first, but just being better. Um, and I think we can see this pattern all around us.
Um, Mark, let me ask and let me challenge you. What was the biggest surprise? The biggest as we've put the show together and recorded it together. What's the one thing that you're like, this is really new for me?
Mark Pearson-Freeland: Well, I mean, to be honest, I'm going to struggle to choose just one. You know, I was scribbling as we were listening to that last clip.
You know, like I say, we could have met an entire upset around that
Mike Parsons: because we
Mark Pearson-Freeland: get references. So many examples of this original thinking existing, this Volusia day approach being intrinsic for hours. Everybody from Martin Luther King, Viper Casso, all the way through to
Mike Parsons: frozen.
Mark Pearson-Freeland: It's a wonderful idea. But for me, if I had to sum it into one thought, I think it's
Mike Parsons: a bulk.
Or,
Mark Pearson-Freeland: sorry, buck. Any, um, traditions or defaults that you naturally fall into, don't, for me, I'm going to challenge myself rather than just accept things as, as default, except things as, Oh, this is just the way it could go. Instead, I'll think, okay, well, how about, how about this way? And then I'll let it percolate, let it sit.
Then I'll come back to it and revisit it and just take time with those ideas. Um. Because I think that's where this, as he says in that last clip, the 16% more creative is when you find that sweet spot, yes. Between procrastination and acting fast,
Mike Parsons: which I love. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you to you, Mark, because you've, you've really summarized for yourself the biggest takeout which, which is he's giving you permission to challenge the status quo and for all of our listeners.
Whether you like the idea of lots of ideas or seeking feedback from your peers or tinkering or starting early, whatever resonated for you. Just go to moonshots.io and you can find all the show notes. You can listen to the show again, you can listen to the back catalog and you can immerse yourself in a world of innovators.
And learn all of that tips, tricks, habits, or their mindsets, uh, to getting the most out of themselves and having impact in the world. Mark, I feel turbocharged I don't need any more espresso. How about you?
Mark Pearson-Freeland: I'm going to go and find Adam grown and have whatever he's been drinking. No, I'm actually positively enlivened after, after this episode, Adam Adams.
Mike Parsons: Wonderful. So we're all turbo charged here at the moonshots podcast. We hope you are. Listeners all over the world were so grateful for your emails, for all your love on social, for all your reviews and ratings. Make sure you hit moonshots.io to give us any
Adam Grant: effect
Mike Parsons: that you've won. It's been great having you, Mark.
It's been great to share. Adam Grant, our second part of the series, all of our listeners, we've got one more left, so stay tuned, but for now. That's the main shop podcast, and that's around.