Think Again: Important People

Wagner Dodge

Wagner was a firefighter at the infamous Mann Gulch fire in Montana in 1949 in which 13 of his fellow firefighters lost their lives. Faced with the out-of-control fire, Dodge broke with procedure and set fire to a patch of grass, thereby creating charred area where he was able to lie down and avoid the flames and smoke. In the Prologue to Think Again, Grant describes Dodge’s actions as an uncommon example of someone being able to override their learned responses to rethink and relearn in a pressure situation.

Mike Lazaridis and Steve Jobs

Lazaridis invented the BlackBerry, a highly successful smartphone in the late 2000s and early 2010s before it quickly became irrelevant. In Chapter 1, Grant blames the BlackBerry’s collapse on Lazaridis’s unwillingness to rethink the viability of its raised keyboard as touchscreens were gaining in popularity. He contrasts Lazaridis’s example of unwillingness to change a strong opinion with Apple founder Steve Jobs’s (eventual) willingness to go along with his team’s transformational recommendation to put a phone into Apple’s top product at the time, the iPod, despite initially being convinced that was a very bad idea.

Daryl Davis

Daryl Davis, a Black musician who was able to persuade various white supremacists to rethink their prejudices by directly engaging with them. Grant describes this in Chapter 6 to illustrate that even deeply entrenched group mentalities can be changed. Davis’s actions are the subject of the 2016 documentary film Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America.

Bill Miller and Stephen Rollnick

Miller, a clinical psychologist, and Rollnick, an addiction nurse, are discussed in Chapter 7 of Think Again regarding the innovative practice of motivational interviewing, which they developed. Miller and Rollnick designed the practice to encourage change by helping people to find their own internal motivation. The two are the authors of the book Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, which was originally published in 1991 and has since appeared in multiple editions.

Betty Bigombe

Betty Oyella Bigombe is a Ugandan politician who was able to convince a warlord to listen to peace talks by taking the time to listen to him in the early 1990s. Grant describes Bigombe’s actions in the Chapter 7 discussion of influential listening, in which he states that listening well is not just a matter of talking less, but also a matter of asking the right questions.

Al Gore

The Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 and Democratic Party Presidential nominee in 2000 is discussed by Grant in Chapter 8 of Think Again in regards to his post-vice presidential career as a leading spokesman for environmental causes and, specifically, the 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, which Gore wrote and narrated. According to Grant, the film’s impact was limited due to what Grant views as its us-versus-them message, which he says is emblematic the concept of of binary bias.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The President of the United States from 1933-1945, Roosevelt is cited by Grant in the Epilogue to Think Again for a speech Roosevelt prior to becoming President. In it, Roosevelt famously advocated for “bold, persistent experimentation” to combat the devastating effects of the Great Depression that had begun in 1929. Grant uses this example as confirmation that the scientific approach to problem solving can be effective even in times of momentous national crisis.

Next section Key Terms