At some point, we’ve all been guilty of not breaking with convention and falling into the trap of “that’s how we’ve always done things”.
It’s this ‘safe thinking’ mindset that Jonah Sachs, author of the bestselling book ‘Unsafe Thinking’, says can often stifle creativity.
You see, Jonah isn’t just making this stuff up, he’s drawn on cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience techniques to break down the way we think.
Naturally we were intrigued. So, through our partnership with Bookomi, we invited Jonah to H+K’s office in Clerkenwell to talk more about his book. He also shared with us his strategies through which we can recondition ourselves to leverage unsafe thinking to succeed in life and business.
Jonah provided us with rich food for thought, snippets of which you’ll find below:
- Expertise can become blindness
People can often become locked into one way of seeing the world, with our knowledge and expertise often hampering creativity and innovation. Jonah says that we shouldn’t apply ego to our knowledge and expertise, instead we should be nimble by opening our minds to new ways of doing things.
- Hiring for cultural fit
Jonah explored the notion that in the workplace, hiring for cultural fit might not be the best way forward. Does an organisation really want to hire someone who thinks like everyone else, or do they want to hire someone who thinks outside of the box and looks at things from a different angle?
- Celebrate rule breakers
Too much creativity can be disruptive – organisations yearn for it but hate it in equal measure. It’s the only way they can stay one step ahead of the competition in an ever-changing world – Jonah believes that rule breakers should be championed in the workplace due to their fearlessness towards unsafe thinking.
- Take time to explore
Low arousal states are necessary to break through into creativity. Jonah suggests that we should slow down to speed up creativity and only work to solve one or two problems at a time.
It’s tips and strategies such as the above that Jonah believes make it easy for us to shift our thinking to find our own ‘psychological safety’ – making it safe to be unsafe.
‘Unsafe Thinking: How to be Creative and Bold When You Need It Most’ by Jonah Sachs is available to buy from Amazon.