December Read/3

Title: Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

Author: Klein, Gary

Call Number: 153.4 K64S 2013

Subject(s): Insight

ISBN: 9781610392518

Number of Pages: 281

Book Description (from inside of the book cover):

            Insights-like Darwin’s understanding of the way evolution actually works, and Watson and Crick’s breakthrough discoveries about the structure of DNA-can change the world. We also need insights into the everyday things that frustrate and confuse us so that we can more effectively solve problems and get things done. Yet we know very little about when, why, or how insights are formed-or what blocks them. In Seeing What Others Don’t, renowned cognitive psychologist Gary Klein unravels the mystery.

            Klein is a keen observer of people in their natural settings-scientists, businesspeople, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, family members, friends, himself-and uses a marvelous variety of stories to illuminate his research into what insights are and how they happen. What, for example, enabled Harry Markopolos to put the finger on Bernie Madoff? How did Dr. Michael Gottlieb make the connections between different patients that allowed him to publish the first announcement of the AIDS epidemic? What did Admiral Yamamoto see (and what did the Americans miss) in a 1940 British attach on the Italian fleet that enabled him to develop the strategy of attack at Pearl Harbor? How did a “smokejumper” see that setting another fire would save his life, while those who ignored his insight perished? How did Martin Chalfie come up with a million-dollar idea (and a Noble Prize) for a natural flashlight that enabled researchers to look inside living organisms to watch biological processes in action?

            Klein also dissects impediments to insight, such as when organizations claim to value employee creativity and to encourage breakthrough but in reality block disruptive ideas and prioritize avoidance of mistakes. Or when information technology systems are “dumb by design” and block potential discoveries.

            Both scientifically sophisticated and fun to read, Seeing What Others Don’t shows that insight is not just a “eureka!” moment but a whole new way of understanding.

My Read:

            This is one few book that intrigued me from the beginning and hooked me up on zealous reading. The part I appreciate the most from reading this book is the storytelling. Those stories take the readers ride after another of investigation and speculation with sufficient information and detailed knowledge about the events/cases/stories. The one story impresses me the most is the story from chapter six, Creative Desperation, titled “Fighting Fire with Fire.” To enforce the rarity of such heroic action and to emphasis the emergent urgency of the situation the firefighters were facing the author uses a picture and a diagram allowing the readers to see, inspect, and imagine the dire condition the story is about. The solution and the act the survived firefighter came upon with is an ingenious one that no one ever has heard of. As I am writing this review my admiration and sense of unbelievable surge as I recall the whole story stated in this book.

            There are three parts listed and described in the book: Part I-Entering Through the Gates of Insight: How Do Insights Get Triggered?; Part II-Shutting the Gates: What Interferes with Insights?; Part III-Opening the Gates: How Can We Foster Insights?

There are five categories/strategies used and listed by the author in this book to decode how and where insights come from. They are: Connections, Coincidences, Curiosities, Contradictions, and Creative Desperation.

The following two diagrams are helpful and designed by the author to further understand his points of view and assist the reader to get hold of his ideas about insights.

Take a look:

            I find the following from the book very inspirational and directive:

“If you don’t expect much, if don’t inquire in a way that respects the intelligence of the other person, you probably won’t find many insights.”-page 233

“It was only through appreciative listening that a research team I headed was able to solve a mystery that stumped British military analysts.”-page 233

“If we want to increase our own insights, we should know about the different paths. The contradiction path depend on our being open to surprises and willing to take them seriously even if they violate our beliefs about the way things work. The connection path begins when we are open to experiences and ready to speculate about unfamiliar possibilities.The creative desperation path requires us to critically examine our assumptions to detect any that are tripping us up.”-page 244

“The new set of beliefs leads us to view the world differently.We have different mental equipment, different ideas about our capabilities, different priorities for what to watch and what to ignore. We have different goals. In some ways we become different people.”-page 246

Reference:

Martin Chalfie and the green fluorescent protein

Harry Markopolos and Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme

Michael gottlieb and AIDS

Jocelyn Bell Burnell and pulsars

Alexander Fleming and penicillin

Wilhelm Roentgen and X-rays

Barry Marshall and ulcers

John Snow and cholera

Wagner Dodge and Mann Gulch

Napoleon at Toulon

Watson-Crick double helix model

9/11 and the Phoenix Memo

Sean MacFarland in Iraq

Kodak bankruptcy

Six Sigma

Rosalind Franklin’s famous photo number 51

Other books by Klein, Gary:

Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions

The Power of Intuition

Working Mind: A Practitioner’s Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis

Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making