Obviously, the obvious is not always obvious and bears repeating.

Hello all you massively marvellous people!

 It’s Friday and that can only mean one thing. It’s time to share a link!! Ok, it can mean other things, but what The Stig is doing these days is only speculation. Some say…

This week, I was looking for some inspiration and came across The Surprising Value of Obvious Insights, written by Adam Grant, researcher and author of Think Again, a really good book. I also love his Work Life podcasts. 

For someone like me who loves to learn new things and surprise people with my breadth of knowledge, stating and re-stating the obvious can feel like it’s not adding value. But, the thing is, it is very important to get back to basics and point out things that a really obvious, like some of the examples given in the article of welcoming an employee on their first day, that it’s bad when managers multi-task during meetings or that star performers who get promoted and are bad managers do more harm than good. 

So, how can this help us tangibly in our day-to-day of being awesome followers and leaders? One way is that it can help reduce obstacles to change. Professor Grant takes us through 3 obstacles to change that can be overcome using the painfully obvious. 

1.      Like many of the debates raging in the media these days, bringing forward contrarian points of view just brings more arguments, but “waltz in with a piece of compelling evidence people already believe is true…and you get immediate buy-in”. 

2.      The 2nd barrier is inertia. That don’t fix what ain’t broke, we’ve always done it this way and this is fine attitudes are really difficult to break. Common sense is not so common. I mean, people know common sense, but they don’t always act on common sense. If you can use influence tactics like social proofs, underlining that their peers update their timesheets on time every Friday morning and coach their people weekly for example, it could be the simple nudge good people need to apply good common sense. 

3.      Finally, there is organizational uniqueness bias, which is when you think your company is really special and that the stuff that works elsewhere won’t work for you. This also means we overlook all the ways we are similar to others. People do this too. If we take a step back and realize how similar we are, we can reduce much of the customization and get things done quicker, giving us time to dive in to the really complex and unique things that represent a much smaller slice of our work. 

In the article, one scientific finding brought forth that really surprised me is “meeting a single person who benefited from your work could be enough to double your effort and triple your productivity”. It is pretty common knowledge that knowing your work will be useful to someone is motivating, but I had no clue it didn’t need to be a bigger number. 

I hope this little article can help you get back to common sense and use the really obvious to your advantage. 

Bonus pro tip: If you went to university, your access to resources, like the online library and scientific article databases, may still work. It is a treasure trove of information!  If you are still an active student, like me, use your access for good! 😊 

Have a great Friday and weekend ahead.

John