I was thinking about thinking recently. I fear I could become lazy using AI but also that we talk about the benefit of challenging each others ideas and sometimes fall short.
So I punched out a blog article on the idea of thinking differently. But then I wondered if my thinking about thinking was going to be limited without feedback or a thinking partner.
So I passed the article to Gemini AI and got a more succinct, smarter version of what I think. Seemed like a good idea to me and to ensure that there was no laziness or weak thinking involved I had Gemini assess my blog which has over a decade of my thinking in it to ensure the result was based on my original article and how I think.
hmmm … Here is the article, based on me changing what Gemini changed, based on what I thought.
I am a big believer that we should remain open to ideas, allow our thinking to be challenged, and stay curious rather than certain.
Yet, when I reflect on the value of thinking differently, I wonder if anyone actually admits to being closed-minded or to being a lazy thinker.
I do know intelligent people with a low tolerance for “dumb” distractions or flat-earth theories, but I’ve never met anyone who claims to be wilfully ignorant. Certainly I claim not to be. Do you actually know anyone who says they are not open to new ideas from others?
Most people I had discussed this with also say that they value diverse thinking in their team and my experience is that this really does lead to better outcomes.
In today’s evidence-based, data-driven world, this is the accepted wisdom, but is it actually true?
When I researched the data during my master’s degree, the truth was more nuanced. Seeing it at a surface level or having Gemini summarise it might miss the nuance or create the wrong nuance.
What I remember, after many years is what I assume to be fact. Diverse teams that lacked respect for one another performed terribly and struggled to storm. Teams with similar backgrounds aligned far more quickly but plateaued at “reasonable” performance. The highest-performing teams possessed two things: significant diversity and deep mutual respect.
So based on the authority of the articles I read, a few years ago, and the credible studies they did – diverse teams outperform non-diverse ones, if and when they have mutual respect and the opportunity to build trust and relationships.
You can take it from me that that is true, because the articles I researched were legit academic ones.
I sound cynical but authority isn’t always bad.
If I am in a burning building alongside an experienced firefighter, I won’t stop to Google survival statistics or debate strategy. Given the urgency and high stakes, I will defer to their expertise.
However, few of our workplace conversations involve standing in literal burning buildings.
A major part of my role in leading team growth is encouraging people to share their observations, even when out-gunned by a guru. There is immense value in working through a shared view based on unexpected perspectives, navigating the tension between respecting a domain expert and challenging the status quo.
But, what if you think differently and do not see the value there? Should I convince you of the obvious truth and great opportunity, or should I entertain the opposite if you present it. You might have real examples where the guru listened too much and held back their expertise, leading to the team being dumber and less effective. You might know of a team where everyone was equal, even though they did not actually have the same understanding or ownership of the problem. Perhaps the diversity in thinking actually distracted from the best outcome.
You may have evidence of that happening and I should listen. But more evidence might not be the best way to convince me.
Personally, I need an idea to be logical to really buy in. Let’s look at the fire scenario again.
If someone presented hard data suggesting we should shelter in place two meters from a blazing inferno, I would reject the data and rely on my basic reasoning that fire is bad and distance is good. Intuitively, I start with what makes sense to me rather than what is evidenced to be real.
More often than not, my instincts are good. But instinct has a dark side: it leaves us vulnerable to manipulation, like social media propaganda, and confirmation bias, where we only seek evidence that proves our initial view right.
So logically, I should lean more heavily into evidence-based thinking. But while that makes sense, that brings me right back to where I started.
If it makes sense for one person to make decisions strictly based on evidence, it logically makes sense for everyone else to do the same. But if we all use the exact same tools to find the exact same evidence to form our thinking, we are no longer thinking differently.
If we standardise our reliance on evidence, do we inadvertently create a bias toward the “correct” way of thinking—and lose the messy, divergent magic of diversity in the process?
Lacking a human to challenge my thinking here though, I did use Gemini. AI can access huge volumes of data and so it can legitimately challenge my thinking. It can also present an idea such as a new version of this article that I can accept, reject or further evolve.
I chose to evolve the article. I did not use Gemini to find better data nor seek dissenting opinions. I guess I could have and it might have led me to thinking differently.
I did get Gemini to proof read and offer a rewrite. Instinctively that seems wrong. It feel sess “thinking differently” than if I ran my idea past a diverse group of friends and then updated it. I wonder if it is less authentic than if I punched out my thinking and left it there. I have written many articles with spelling errors, messy thinking and other warts and all evidence of my real thinking process.
Yet I still got to re-edit what Gemini suggested and choose the final wording. I rewrote what it suggest and in the process evolved my thinking.
Was that lazy thinking or thinking differently?
For reference – here is how I used Gemini AI to remove the diversity and individual quirks from my thinking:
Key Structural Adjustments Made (Claude):
- Sharpened the “Storming” Nuance: Tightened the paragraph about your university research to create a stronger contrast between teams that just “storm” and those that truly perform, keeping it highly relevant to team dynamics and delivery.
- Condensed the Firefighter Analogy: The burning building analogy is great, but it looped back on itself in the original draft. It now serves as a quick, punchy anchor for “Authority” before immediately contrasting with the low-stakes environment of everyday team growth.
- Clarified the Big History Framework: Grouped Authority, Instinct, Logic, and Evidence a bit more cleanly so the reader can follow your progression through these different ways of thinking.
- Punched Up the Paradoxical Ending: The original ending posed a great philosophical question but trailed off slightly. The rewrite sharpens the final question to leave the reader actively pondering the balance between evidence-based alignment and true cognitive diversity.
Key Structural Adjustments Made (James):
- Deleted several chunks and then rewrote the draft to ponder AI, which was not in the original at all
- Potentially added a spelling mistake but I don’t think so.
