Hello everyone. Last time, I wrote about “Knowledge Management” as one of the soft skills that problem solvers should have. Among them, “good knowledge manager is essential” for successful knowledge management, and the required qualities are 1. Tacit Knowledge, 2. Willingness to contribute to others and 3. GRIT (perseverance).
This time, I would like to write about how to develop GRIT (the ability to persevere) and the concept of “Growth Mindset” that would be useful for that purpose.
1. How to measure “GRIT”
“GRIT” is a concept proposed by Professor Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania, and it was “passion and perseverance toward long-term goals”, right? Now, this “GRIT” can be easily measured. Simply answer the 10 questions below (on a 5-point scale). Divide that total by 10 to get your current GRIT score.
Please try it when you have time. How many points did you get? 🙂 I got 4.2 points. So, let’s think about how to improve from this current score.
2. “Growth Mindset”
It seems that “Growth Mindset” is effective in developing “GRIT”. The “Growth Mindset” is a concept proposed by Professor Carol Dweck of Stanford University. There is a video on Youtube (about 10 minutes), so if you have time, please watch it (If you are busy, please continue reading below).
Now, regarding this “Growth Mindset”, there is “Fixed Mindset” as an opposing concept. To give an easy-to-understand example, when faced with the situation of “failing in a math test”, a person with “Fixed Mindset” will easily give up by saying “I have no talent”, and a person with “Growth Mindset” will take it positively by saying “I need to study more”.
If you hear the story like this, it tends to be a story like “Fixed Mindset” is not good, so let’s aim for “Growth Mindset”! But I personally think that it’s not actually a story of “zero” vs. “one” like this.
As you can see in the above figure, many people have both “Fixed Mindset” and “Growth Mindset”, and I think the ratio varies from person to person. For example, some people have “Fixed Mindset” at work but “Growth Mindset” when they get home. There might also be some people who have “Fixed Mindset” at work / home, but have “Growth Mindset” at a drink bar, like “Night star”. 🙂
And, I think this ratio is “2 to 6 to 2”.
3. Law of “2 vs. 6 vs. 2”
The law of “2 vs 6 vs 2” is said to apply universally to human groups. It is a way of thinking that it is divided into “Excellent 20%”, “Medium 60%” and “Bottom 20%”. If you write like this, it tends to say let’s aim for “excellent 20%”! I think it tends to be a story, but the interesting thing about this “2 vs 6 vs 2” rule is that if you collect “excellent 20%” from multiple groups and form a new group, It is said to be divided into “2 vs. 6 vs. 2”. Perhaps this ratio of “2 : 6 : 2” is just right for the balance of the group.
The image above shows an image of a swarm of ants. You can see it, but it seems that only 20% of the excellent workers are actually carrying them, and the rest are just pretending to be carrying them. Furthermore, the “bottom 20%” are sleeping in their nests without pretending to be carrying them (laughs).
However, in fact, each has a role, and it seems that the “bottom 20%” seem to be “sleeping” but they actually protect the queen ant. Also, among the “excellent 20%”, there would be some ants who gradually become tired and weak and pinch hitters would appear to replace them among the “middle class 60%”. This is interesting.
It’s getting a little off topic (laughs), but what I’m trying to say is, let’s all aim for an “excellent 20%”! is not realistic, and I think that the “Growth Mindset” is to “aim for a little growth” in each position.
4. How to develop “GRIT”
Let’s summarize the main topic of this time, how to develop “GRIT”.
1. Set daily goals: By setting and working on daily goals, you can train your GRIT. “It doesn’t matter how small the goal is“. However, it is said that “long-term” goals would be more effective.
2. Find a good process: There is more than one way to achieve your goals, so if things don’t work out, don’t stick to the same way and change quickly. Accumulating achievement experience would be important for GRIT training, so if things don’t go well, it’s effective to change the way you do things and keep achieving more and more.
3. Optimism training: When setting goals and starting to take action, it is important to have a mindset that thinks, “Let’s try” and “I won’t know unless I try”. And it’s also important to think that “sometimes things don’t go well, but sometimes things go well”. And it seems that “GRIT” is forged by accumulating experiences that “I tried it and it worked”.
What do you think? Once you find the right person for “knowledge manager”, be sure to have them develop their “GRIT”. That’s the success factor for your company’s knowledge management!
That’s all for this time, and I would like to continue from the next time onwards. Thank you for reading until the end.