The Entrepreneurs Library
A Preview of Seeing What Others Don’t with Gary Klein
A summary of things you should know about Seeing What Others Don’t according to Gary Klein:
Introduction
In this episode Gary Klein reveals all his insights on his book, Seeing What Others Don’t, where he reveals when, why, and how insights are formed and what blocks them.
In his book Klein shares stories involving his years of cognitive learning research that uncover the origins of creativity and how many successful innovators were able to create their marvelous ideas. The goal of the book is to help you train your brain to be more creative, effectively solve more problems, avoid disruptive idea blockers, and think faster than the average person.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who work in a stressful, fast-paced environment and want to learn how to improve their cognitive thinking skill in order to make fast, intelligent decisions.
The Book’s Unique Quality (2:43)
My book is based on 120 cases of actual insight research. This is a fresh look of how people actually come up with insights.
The Best Way To Engage (3:38)
There can be some jumping in and out but I suggest you read it straight through.
The Reader’s Takeaway (8:47)
If there is only one thing the one thing would be this notion of a down and an up arrow. Too often our thinking is over balanced about reducing mistakes and being defensive and there needs to be a balance. We need to balance how much energy we are putting into reducing mistakes and how much energy we are putting into gaining insights.
A Deep Dive Into The Book (3:38)
The first section asks the question of where do insights come from and it not only describes how insights are achieved but it also shows how I came up with each conclusion. The outcome of this first part is a new model of where insights come from. I show that there are several different paths, one is a traditional path, another is a path people have heard of, and the third is a path no one had mentioned before.
Now that we know where insights come from we ask the question why we don’t have more of them. To my surprise I find that there are a lot of forces that work against having insights and the scariest is that organizations are afraid of them. They claim that they want to promote it and believe it but insights don’t work well with organizations because insights are disruptive.
The third part of the book is about what we can do to try to increase insights. I have some suggestions about what we can do personally and I have more suggestions about what we can do to help others gain insights. I also have some suggestions about what organization can do and I am working with organizations that want to increase the number or insights.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 03:38
Notable Quotes From The Book (10:17)
“I have tried to take some of the mystery out of insights but I don’t want to diminish the aww we feel when we encounter insights whether it’s our own or someone else’s. At these times something magical has happened.” – Gary Klein
The Credibility/Inspiration Of The Author (0:35)
I was trained in experimental psychology and over the years I got interested in seeing how people actually work outside of laboratories and specifically how people make life and death decisions under extreme time pressure. So we’ve studied firefighters, nurses, physicians and so forth to see what they actually do.
I would make presentations on my work on decision making to audiences and there was a slide that I would use that had an up arrow and a down arrow. The down arrow was ways to improve performance by reduction and the up arrow was about what to increase in order to improve performance. What you wanted to increase was insights and so I would tell groups that and they resonated to it. They kept asking me questions about the up arrow that I didn’t have answers to. Finally I decided I need to do some research and study the up arrow which is what led me to writing this book.
Other Books Recommended By The Author (14:30)
What Computers Still Can’t Do by Hubert Dreyfus
More Information About This Book and The Author
Buy Seeing What Others Don’t by Gary Klein on Amazon today
Visit PsychologyToday.com to learn more about Gary’s blog
Visit ShadowboxTraining.com to learn more about Gary’s training techniques
Follow Gary Klein on Twitter
More Information About This Episode
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Innovative Entrepreneur by Daniel Spluber
Anticipate by Rob-Jan de Jong
The Myths of Creativity by David Burkus
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What do you think about Gary Klein’s book, Seeing What Others Don’t? Share your review in the comments below:
Wade Danielson
Wade is a 4-time serial entrepreneur and is the Founder/Host of The Entrepreneurs Library. With a long time passion for reading books, Wade created an online resource and podcast for entrepreneurs who love to read personal and business development books. His long-term goal in life is to start an entrepreneurial home schooling program for children of business-minded families.
