“One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.”
Alexander Fleming, on his accidental disovery of Penicillin
How do you react to surprises? The “fixed mindset” part of us may resist, protest, defend, deny. The “growth mindset” part, however, may respond more positively.
Be aware of your response to surprises, particularly in your role as a leader. Others will act based upon what they observe in you, both in each situation and as a pattern.
I love these thoughts from a recent newsletter from Shane Parrish of Farnam Street:
We tend to think that what we think is true. And because we think something is true, we ignore information that might tell us it’s not true.
Charles Darwin deliberately looked for thoughts that disagreed with his own. He wrote, “whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from memory than favorable ones.” Darwin was out for truth, not to confirm his view of the world.
“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change,” Marcus Aurelius said. “For I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance.”
Surprises alert you to flawed thinking. When results are not what you expected. When facts disagree with you. When someone does something unexpected. “What surprise tells you,” my friend Adam Robinson says, “is that your model of the world is incorrect.” And when your model of the world is incorrect, you need to figure out why.
When you catch yourself saying “that doesn’t make any sense,” “that shouldn’t happen,” “I didn’t expect that,” you’re surprised. That’s your cue to pay attention.
Surprises are a clue that you’re missing something. Dive in and figure out what.