Book SummaryHidden Potential, by Adam Grant

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Hidden Potential

People often assume that to accomplish something truly great, you must be one of a few “gifted” geniuses born with extraordinary talent. However, psychologist Adam Grant argues in Hidden Potential that the world’s top performers weren’t extraordinary geniuses from birth; rather, they built their skills over time using the right techniques. The capacity to achieve isn’t rare—everyone has more potential to accomplish great things than they think they do.

(Shortform note: In Mindset, Carol Dweck also notes that many influential geniuses didn’t have extraordinary abilities at birth, pointing to figures like Darwin and Tolstoy. Rather, their passion, persistent effort, and commitment to learning allowed them to develop incredible talents over time. These are key aspects of what Dweck calls a growth mindset: the belief that abilities and...

Hidden Potential Summary How to Tap Into Your Potential

Grant contends that to accomplish great things, you need to spend a lot of time honing your skills by engaging in fun, yet uncomfortable practice. Let’s explore this idea more deeply.

Learning Should Be Fun

According to Grant, to maximize your potential, you need to cultivate the passion and playfulness required to have fun while building your skills. Why? Because becoming a master at anything requires you to devote countless hours of your life to practice. If you don’t enjoy yourself while practicing, at some point you’ll get burnt out and lose the energy and motivation to continue toward your goals.

Grant offers two ways to make your practice more fun. First, find a way to add variety to your routine. It’ll be much harder for you to get bored or become demotivated if you free yourself to switch between several kinds of practice in a given session. Frequently varying your practice also increases your ability to retain what you learn.

Second, find a way to track your performance and compare it to what you’ve done in the past. Invent rules for tracking your “points” and constantly seek to beat your high score. The pressure to “win” motivates you to focus...

Hidden Potential Summary How Other People Can Tap Into Your Potential

So far, we’ve explored various ways that fun yet uncomfortable training can fuel your personal growth. That said, however you optimize your training, reaching your full potential is much more difficult when you try to do it alone. Grant explains that other people can assist your personal growth by giving you guidance, inspiring a sense of purpose in you, and working with you as a team. Let’s explore these three benefits in more detail.

Benefit #1: Guidance

Grant notes that your ability to teach yourself has limits. Often, you’ll need guidance from others, especially if you’re trying to learn to do something complex where “success” is subjective, like composing a symphony or starting a political career.

To ensure that the advice you receive will actually help you, choose your guides carefully. Find someone who knows what they’re talking about, is familiar enough with you and your work to give an accurate assessment, and truly wants you to succeed. Otherwise, you could end up with bad advice, advice that doesn’t fit you, or advice that isn’t intended to be helpful.

(Shortform note: Those who give unwise, unsuitable, or malicious advice may be particularly...

Hidden Potential Summary How Organizations Can Tap Into Their Potential

So far, we've discussed how each of us can reach our full potential through smart practice and by connecting with others. We’ll conclude this guide by exploring what organizations can do to achieve more on a larger scale. Here are two tips that organizations can use to identify and utilize all their workers’ potential.

Tip #1: Encourage Good Ideas From Everyone in the Organization

Grant argues that if organizations want to achieve the best results, they need to encourage and empower all their employees to share their best ideas with workers who can act on them. In most organizations, however, this doesn’t happen. When an employee suggests a way to improve the organization, their boss will typically ignore it. Why? They may feel threatened by the idea that their subordinate could offer better ideas than them. Alternatively, they may worry that if the idea fails, they’ll be held responsible.

To fix this problem, Grant proposes a system where employees can freely share ideas with multiple leaders across the organization, increasing the odds that someone will approve and implement those ideas. In this system, **even if many high-ranking managers reject your idea, all it...

Shortform Exercise: Revamp Your Training Routine

Grant contends that no matter what you want to accomplish, the path to success lies in optimizing the way you build your skills. Accelerate your learning by applying his advice to your current training routine.

Identify a skill that you want to get better at to achieve an important goal. Describe your current training routine for this skill. If you don’t have a training routine, design one from the ground up. (For example, perhaps you want to learn how to write code so you can get a job in a new field. Currently, you might be trying to learn by coding a to-do list app whenever you have time and consulting an instructional book whenever you get stuck.)