Children trust.
Grown-ups are skeptical.
Children love surprises.
Grown-ups like things to
be predictable.
Children experiment.
Grown-ups make rules and follow
instructions.
Children have unbridled
enthusiasm.
Grown-ups are guarded.
Children have millions of questions.
Grown-ups have all the
answers.
We need to be idealistic
to change something.
We need to believe that
anything is possible and to see those possibilities.
We need to experience
wonder, enthusiasm, and intense curiosity.
Can grown ups change the
world?
Maybe not – that is, if
they don’t have a little child in them.
The good news: No one is
forcing us to be grown-ups all the time!
Ann,
You got it.
2) She does address how you can shift from one to the other. And, yes, we can have a growth mindset in some situations and a fixed one in others.
And it is an easy read to boot.
Valeria-
Wow – now I have another book on my Christmas List!
You’re exactly right. A growth mindset is a great way to look at it. I would suspect that:
1) A growth mindset isn’t all “pie in the sky”. Does the author addresses ideas AND execution? We all want to take a great idea and then turn it into a great and sustainable business. I worry sometimes that when I talk about the child-like (or growth) mindset it can be misinterpreted as an extreme swing to a pendulum rather than balance between experimentation, growth, learning, and turning that all into something tangible.
3) We can have a growth mindset in some areas and a fixed mindset in others. I think this would be interesting to explore because – all change agents CAN be change resistors in another setting! It’s a constant battle to keep yourself honest!
Thanks for a great find!
Ann
Ann – what a great post. What I liked about it the most was the comment he made about how VC’s aren’t the most representative sample of people in the world. I find that this is a big issue in product deveopment in general – product developers begin to speak for (instead of with) their customers and they forget that THEY are not representative of their customer group.
Thanks for pointing this out!!
Ann
Ann – I am reading a book that would shift our thinking on that. I always thought too that preserving the child in us meant keeping the wonder, losing the judgment, etc.
It turns out, that in fact what we’ve been calling ‘the child in us’ is the Growth Mindset. People with the growth mindset — in all facets of life — fare much better in achievement than people with the Fixed Mindset.
That’s because people with the growth mindset believe in the ability to learn and evolve. They feel that the opportunity to experience and learn overrides the temporary discomfort of making a mistake (possibly). Think about Lou Gestner of IBM, for example.
People with a fixed mindset believe in a fixed set of skills and talent they need to protect. So they go through life avoiding challenge and failure. Some examples of that are bullies — think of Jeff Skillings at Enron, John McEnroe.
The good news, according to psychologist Carol Dweck, is that mindset is not ‘set’, and can be changed. The book includes a full chapter on mindsets in relationships. A recommended reading. It’s called “Mindset, the New Psychology of Success” by Carol Dweck, Ph.D.
Maybe this is why the VCs are increasingly asking children for investment advice, which Matt Richtel wrote about a recent NY Times piece? And Paul Kedrosky blogged about here?
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/12/16/_and_a_child_wi.html