tom willerer . com

The curious nature of an insight

In order to do my job well I need to ask interesting questions of people and listen intently to understand their underlying motivations, which is actually quite difficult because I have (we all do) all sorts of biases about why people do what they do when they do.

But our biases block us from actually hearing what people are saying.  And if we don’t actually hear what people are saying, we can’t effectively uncover insight into anything.

Additionally, in order for me to effectively convince others that an insight is important I need to help them understand their own bias so that they can then see the insight afresh.  And the only way I can do this is by fully understanding my own bias first.

But the curious aspect of most great insights is that they are fairly obvious, but we are just blind to them because of our biases.

So a good place to start when trying to uncover insight into a given topic is with oneself.  Try to recognize your own bias as a starting point as it will make you much more effective in both uncovering and communicating great insights.

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