I recently heard a talk at WebSummit by Saalim Chowdhury of 500 Startups on the topic of business growth, where he outlined what the Growth Mindset is and why it is so important for an entrepreneur.
To put the term into context, it originated in positive psychology where it describes a mindset where individuals attribute their talents and skills to invested effort, as opposed to innate qualities (fixed mindset). It became the basis of learned optimism — a psychological tool set based on the 3 variables of permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization —which by taking advantage of an optimistic explanatory style, reduces rates of depression, leads to higher achievement, and improves health. The evidence in favour of this psychological tool set has been so great that it has become the core of modern cognitive therapy.
It isn't surprising that this mindset increases resilience and achievement, however, Saalim raised a few interesting insights into how this mindset manifests itself specifically in entrepreneurs. Here they are, as I interpret them:
Growth Mindset:
- Humble — Embrace failure. [This topic has seen entire libraries of content devoted to it, and rightly so. It is key for founders to learn from failure, instead of being negatively affected by it.]
- Tenacious — Persistence and determination to do great work.
- Scientific thinking — Systematic thinkers, curious, keen observers, experimental design, causation and correlation.
- Efficiency — Simplifying the customer journey.
- Leverage— Systems thinker and Pareto principle.
This mindset results in the following behaviours:
Growth Behaviours:
- Intensely Curious — always asking a lot of questions.
- Optimistic — comfortable with ambiguity.
- Diverse — Variety of perspectives and backgrounds.
- Relationship Builders — Can help involve the whole organisation.
- Driven — People who know what success looks like and won't settle.
As a former student of philosophy of science, it’s great to see the importance of scientific thinking be highlighted; This further cements my view that the mechanistic scientific model is an extremely powerful methodology for understanding the world, even complex systems.
Further Reading:
Want to develop a growth mindset? These two books really helped me understand and implement this concept:
A. Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman — The seminal book on positive pscyhology :
US Affiliate Link — http://amzn.to/2yDzliM
UK Affiliate Link — http://amzn.to/2jpW92z
B. Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed — This book explores the role of failure, and the importance of testing and the resulting feedback loop.
US Affiliate Link — http://amzn.to/2AJRVXK
UK Affiliate Link — http://amzn.to/2jrnNwn
