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I’m-proving vs. Improving.


Chip: It’s great to have you join me on our daily blog, Guy. I’ll ask you a few questions over the next couple days and hopefully we’ll all be wiser for it. Psychologist Carol Dweck says that a fixed mindset focused on proving oneself while a growth mindset is all about improving oneself. Why is her book, “Mindset,” one of your favorite books and how has it made a difference in your life?

Guy: Great to join you, Chip. Carol’s book and philosophy resonate with my view of the world. Or, maybe it actually caused my view of the world. Oddly, I came to realize this because of my approach to sports. I took up ice hockey at age 44. That’s about 40 years too late.

Most people would stop there. But no, I took up surfing at 61. That’s about 57 years too late. In each case, I fell in love with the sport, and it seldom occurred to me that I was too old to take up either sport.

Then, on a more intellectual level, I decided to reinvent myself as a podcaster this past summer. That was about a growth mindset too because I had often been on the interviewee side of the mic, but never on the interviewer side.

Chip: Did Steve Jobs have a growth mindset? What did you learn from him?

Guy: This is not as easy a question as you might think. In the years that I worked for him, I didn’t see him take up hockey or surfing or podcasting. However, the tools that he invented certainly enabled people to adopt and embrace a growth mindset. He was just so good at inventing the future that maybe he personally didn’t need to grow beyond this.

The most important lesson I learned from Steve Jobs is that customers cannot necessarily tell you how to innovate. They can tell you how to incrementally improve something–better, faster, cheaper, but not how to jump to the next curve of innovation.

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