Unsafe Thinking: How to be Nimble and Bold When You Need It Most

by Jonah Sachs

Overview

A Financial Times Book of the Month

"An enchanting book about how to question the conventional, challenge the status quo, and unlock the creative solutions right under your nose." --Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals, Give and Take, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg

"Unsafe Thinking delivers an array of fresh insights on creativity, motivation, and staying in 'flow.' Packed with powerful case studies, it will propel you out of your rut and onto a path of better, sharper thinking."--Daniel H. Pink, author of When and To Sell Is Human

How can you challenge and change yourself when you need it most? We're creatures of habit, programmed by evolution to favor the safe and familiar, especially when the stakes are high. This bias no longer serves us in a world of constant change. In fact, today, safe thinking has become extremely dangerous.

Through stories of trailblazers in business, health, education and activism, and leveraging decades of research into creativity and performance, Jonah Sachs reveals a path to higher performance and creativity for anyone ready to step out of their comfort zone. He introduces troublemakers willing to challenge corporate culture like the executive who convinced CVS to drop its multibillion-dollar tobacco business. She now leads the pharmacy giant. Readers will get firsthand accounts of breaking from the status quo from a Nobel prize winning doctor who nearly got himself thrown out medicine, a two-time NBA championship coach who brought joy back to his team by tuning down the focus on competition, a CEO who rebuilt her reputation and life from the ashes from one of the biggest flops in internet history and a Colombian mayor who started an incredibly successful career of political reform by mooning an angry crowd.

Unsafe Thinking is full of counter-intuitive insights that will challenge you to rethink how you work. You'll learn:

Why your area of deep expertise is often where you'll find your biggest blind spots

Why anxiety can be fuel for creativity

When to trust intuition and when to challenge it

How collaborating only with those that share your values stunts your creativity

How to build an organization that embraces intelligent risk.

An inspiring and accessible read, Unsafe Thinking has the power to change both the way you approach your work and your life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738220147
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	04/24/2018
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Jonah Sachs is the founder and a partner of Free Range Studios, a brand and innovation company that transforms companies through unsafe thinking. For his work he has been awarded "best of" honors three times at the South by Southwest interactive festival, earned a Webby award, and been featured at the Sundance Film Festival.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Dangers of Safety xi

Introduction: The Path to Unsafe Thinking xix

Part 1 Courage

1 The Safe Thinking Cycle 3

Why we stick to our guns even when we know we shouldn't

Programmed to Seek Safety 8

2 Fear as Fuel 13

How to embrace anxiety and break the safe thinking cycle

Getting Comfortable with Discomfort 18

Part 2 Motivation

3 Mastering Motivation 23

How to energize yourself and others to stay on the edge

Discovering Intrinsic Motivation 27

When Motivation Goes Awry 29

Creating Motivational Alchemy 30

The Right Motivation at the Right Time 33

4 Finding Your Source 37

Why we need to love the challenges we face

Loving Difficult Things 40

Navigating Your Way to Flow 42

Outsmarting Dings and Chimes 47

The Good Side of Distraction 49

Part 3 Learning

5 The Explorer's Edge 57

How to pursue expertise without falling into the expert's trap

Demystifying the Beginners Advantage 59

Seeing So Clearly We Become Blind 63

From Expert to Explorer 67

6 Ego and Urgency 73

How to tame the urges that keep us from exploring

Feeling So Smart We Become Stupid 74

Mastering the Need for Speed 79

Part 4 Flexibility

7 The Power and Perils of Thinking with Your Gut 89

Why we need intuition and how it often leads us astray

Brilliant Ideas That Look Insane to (Almost) Everyone 92

Our Hidden Genius 94

The Myth of the Golden Gut 97

8 Harnessing Intuition 105

How to recognize faulty intuition and hone your instincts

Fooled by Shortcuts 105

Fooled by Emotion 108

Interrogating Intuition 111

Learning Environments: Wicked and Kind 115

Disarming Our Biases 117

9 Leaping into the Counterintuitive 121

How to tackle difficult problems with unexpected solutions

Embracing the Absurd 125

Unsafe Thinking About Safety 131

How to Cultivate Counterintuitive Creativity 136

Part 5 Morality

10 When Wrong Is Right 145

Why being creative sometimes means bending (or breaking) the rules

The Cost of Creativity 148

Disobeying Wisely 153

Encouraging Others to Rebel 155

Keeping Rules at Bay 158

Breaking Our Own Rules 159

11 Creating with the Enemy 161

Why we need friends who look like foes

Seeking Out the Unlikeliest Allies 164

Part 6 Leadership

12 Unsafety in Numbers 173

How to break consensus and infect others with the confidence to take risks

Countering Conformity 177

Escaping the Trap of Agreement 179

Crafting Productive Conflict 180

Gleaning Ideas from the Edges 182

Making It Safe to Get Unsafe 185

13 Rewarding the Nonobvious 189

How the right incentives fuel breakthrough creative teams

Epilogue 195

Acknowledgments 199

Notes 201

Index 213

Editorial Reviews

"An enchanting book about how to question the conventional, challenge the status quo, and unlock the creative solutions right under your nose."—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals, Give and Take, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg

"Unsafe Thinking delivers an array of fresh insights on creativity, motivation, and staying in 'flow.' Packed with powerful case studies, it will propel you out of your rut and onto a path of better, sharper thinking."—Daniel H. Pink, author of When and To Sell Is Human

"A deeply insightful book for creators that only a creator could write."—Peter Sims, founder & CEO, Parliament, Inc., author of Little Bets

A practical and truly entertaining roadmap to becoming more creative and productive. A must-read for anyone facing a changing world."—Jonah Berger, Wharton Professor, author of Contagions

"A blazingly original book. In crisp, breezy prose, Sachs details winning strategies from explorers and business organizations through history. I found the stories themselves riveting, and Unsafe Thinking is destined to become a classic in creative thought."—Mary Karr, author of The Liar's Club and Lit

"All innovators have to have very tough skins. But beyond the peril of going against the crowd is the joy of fresh creation. Read this book and reflect on your own life. It could make a big difference."—Former U.S. Senator bill Bradley

"Unsafe Thinking provides an inspiring and practical guide on how to truly think outside of the box and stay in productive flow. Master storyteller Jonah Sachs combines the latest research with accessible best practices to help us all become more comfortable being uncomfortable."—Lisa Kay Solomon, Chair, Transformational Practices, Singularity University, coauthor, Moments of Impact and Design a Better Business

"Posing the question of why so many people get stuck in conventional, old-fashioned thinking when it comes to work, journalist Sachs argues, energetically...that the answer lies in a mixture of fear and habit...Sachs walks through the key components of unsafe thinking, namely courage, motivation, learning, flexibility, morality, and leadership, using his interviewees' stories...to illustrate his points. The writing is lively."
—Publishers Weekly

"Unsafe Thinking explores the alternative to the tried and tested solution...[A] mix of anecdote and scientific research."—Financial Times (an "FT business book of the month")

"Fascinating."—Forbes

"I found some real insights...in a new book, Unsafe Thinking, by Jonah Sachs, who is one of the influential social innovators I know. He outlines a set of straightforward practices that both he and I believe we can all use to create counter-intuitive breakthroughs ourselves. We don't need to wait for lightning to strike, if we proactively improve our ability to accept more seemingly outlandish solutions and ideas."—Martin Zwilling, Inc.com

"Focuses on how leaders can think in new ways and encourage their organizations to think in new, unconventional ways."—National Center for the Middle Market

"Learning to be more comfortable with uncertainty might be the most important innovation in business and life we have today, and it is just one of the many gems in Sachs's brilliant book."—Psych Central

"[Sachs is] an excellent writer whose candor and curiosity translate into compelling storytelling...A wonderful book for association CEOs and board leaders ready (or not) to recalibrate risk-taking and strategic planning."
—Associations Now

From the Publisher