So here’s something I didn’t know.

Steve Jobs hated phones. He didn’t want to make them. He didn’t want to disrupt his thriving iPod business.

He thought adding phone capabilities to an iPod was the dumbest idea he’d ever heard of.

Luckily, his engineers were able to help him re-think.

Luckily,  he had the capability to re-think and wasn’t so set in his ways and biased by the love of his existing brilliant product that he could consider where the market was heading rather than where it was right now. Otherwise the iPhone might never have existed. Heck, maybe we’d all be still using Blackberry’s.

Engineers tend to be data driven people. When you need to convince someone else to re-think their position, lead with data.

Fortunately his engineers were charged with the job of looking ahead and were already looking into phone technology. They were amassing the data and predicting the market.

So don’t just be another opinion in the room. Don’t just preach, prosecute or politic, but think like a scientist when you want to help others re-think their position.

Inspired by Think Again by Adam Grant, which I’m listening to at the moment. So far, I can recommend it.

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