The Slow Decline of Growth Mindset
How a popular book on human psychology sparked a movement...and what happened next
In 2015, I was sitting on a couch in my company’s Executive Briefing Center, quickly going over my notes. I had presented many times in the EBC, but this one was kind of a big deal - my first presentation to a sovereign government.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure coming directly towards me, so I looked up.
“Hi. It’s Paul, right?” he said
I smiled back nervously.
I’m Satya,” he said.
“I know” was my rather lame reply to Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft.
“I’m speaking to this group before you - is there anything I can do to help support your presentation?”
I didn’t have a great answer, but did manage to come up with something vaguely relevant. Then came the next question.
“Unfortunately, I cannot stay for your full presentation, but do you have a few minutes to help me understand what you are working on?”
And so, while we both waited for the executive briefing to start, I gave the CEO of one of the largest companies on earth a primer into my world, and he actually listened, even asking clarifying questions, before thanking me for my time as we both headed in.
It was then that I realized that my CEO actually believed in, even embodied, something he’d been talking to the company about for a few months now - Growth Mindset.
The Book
I had read Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck several years earlier, on a vacation in Vancouver Island, and it really stuck with me. There was something about the promise of always being able to grow that really resonated with me. I’d recently been going through a very mini-existential crisis, realizing how little I knew about so many things, and that no matter how hard I studied, I might never truly be an expert on anything. To me, Dweck’s work took something that I’d thought of as a problem (the vast expanse of things I didn’t know) and turned it into an asset (the vast expanse of things I could learn). And the idea that for the rest of my life I could continue to improve, just through a commitment to do so, was genuinely exciting.
The story goes that Satya read the book at the suggestion of his wife, Anu, and he saw the book as a tool to help him transform the culture at Microsoft. As is well known today, the Microsoft that Satya took over was in the early stage of a transformation from a company that sold software licences to one that sold cloud computing services. They were world leaders at doing the former, and woefully inept at doing the latter, particularly when compared to big dogs like Amazon Web Services.
As someone who had been at Microsoft for decades, Satya realized that this change wasn’t just about building new things; it was about changing the way people perceived Microsoft and even changing how Microsoft perceived itself. As employees, we knew all about our current products and services, how they should be built, marketed, and sold, but we knew next to nothing about the type of Microsoft our CEO was trying to build.
We were all beginners. But did we realize it?
Perhaps the ideas in Mindset could help us get there.
Mindset as Culture Driver
Over the following months, Satya repeatedly discussed the need - the existential need - for Microsoft employees to develop a growth mindset. Growth mindset training opportunities began to spring up in multiple places, and every time I saw one, I took it, as did many of my colleagues. Each piece of training added a little piece to the puzzle for me, helped me enjoy my work more, and probably indirectly contributed to the formation of the company I run today.
And I wasn’t the only one affected by it. When a CEO repeatedly talks about anything, it has an impact. Sure enough, the word "mindset" soon began to appear everywhere in the company, and even across the broader business world. Believe it or not, before Dweck’s book became popular, there wasn’t really a term to describe the collection of beliefs, attitudes, and perspectives that people bring to their lives and work. Soon mindset was everywhere.
This is one of the ways culture does change. Specific language is used (or created) to describe what exists and what is wanted, and through thousands of conversations, it starts to change how we think and what we do. But if you really want to turn an interesting concept into a movement, the language you use should be simple and highly emotive, which is where another phrase came in at Microsoft - Learn-it-all.
Learn-it-all is not in Dweck’s book, but in many ways it is a brilliant simplification. Who could possibly admit that they don’t want to learn? And what about its counterpoint - know-it-all? NOBODY wants to be called that. It’s literally a playground taunt.
Mainstream Growth Mindset
I don’t recall exactly when, but there came a time when growth mindset was fully institutionalized as Microsoft culture. Everybody was somewhat conversant in the concept. Growth mindset was Microsoft and Microsoft was growth mindset. It was our not-so-secret weapon, our differentiator, and it was how we were going to take on our biggest competitors.
It was about this time that I started to wonder whether growth mindset had true merit at scale. Initially, I tried to put those feelings aside. It was probably just a business version of when the band you worship signs for the major record label and suddenly belongs to everyone. They probably aren’t any worse, but they aren’t your secret love anymore.
But the more I researched it, the more I realized that there were real, potentially serious issues with growth mindset as culture.
Issue One: It Was Wrong
Hopefully, that got your attention.
It certainly got mine at the time.
The heart of the book Mindset is the assertion that this is an attribute that can be honed broadly and applied to your whole life. But everywhere I looked (including when I took a cold, hard look at myself), I saw people who had a growth mindset in some domains, and a pretty fixed one in others. I even saw mindsets shift within the same domain, depending on the circumstances. You might have seen this yourself if you’ve switched topics with someone you’ve been learning and growing alongside, and seen a jarring attitude shift into a set of seemingly unalterable views. Or you might see a growth mindset suddenly become very fixed when the pressure is on. This often happens in the realm of politics, but it’s actually all around us.
But these weren’t just my observations. Carol Dweck herself was offering similar ones, right when much of the world was embracing a simplified version of the claims in her book.
Here’s a quote (emphasis mine) in a 2015 interview with Dweck in EdWeek.
“Let’s legitimize the fixed mindset. Let’s acknowledge that (1) we’re all a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, (2) we will probably always be, and (3) if we want to move closer to a growth mindset in our thoughts and practices, we need to stay in touch with our fixed-mindset thoughts and deeds.”
So, when I say growth mindset was wrong, I don’t mean in the sense that it was entirely debunked. But the thing that businesses picked up on - a broad capability that could be trained at scale was wrong, and we persisted anyway.
Upon reflection, I believe that having a narrow growth mindset is likely quite beneficial for us as humans. By honing in on specific areas of growth, we can direct our growth more precisely. I’m a lousy painter, and my fixed mindset here screams at me that I’ll never be any good at it. However, given that I’ve no desire to improve, the fixed mindset helps me conserve my energy for the things that truly matter to me - the areas where I do want to grow.
Issue Two: It’s Preaching to the Converted
Given Issue One, it’s hardly surprising that different people have different attitudes towards the concept of growth mindset, including whether they need it and whether they already possess it.
And unfortunately, reading a book on growth mindset, or even doing a course isn’t likely to change those views.
I loved the book Mindset because I read it at a time when I was in full “learn-it-all” mode. I was very aware of all the things I didn’t know, and the book impacted me because Dweck made that not just ok, but good! But imagine if I’d approached the book while in full-on fixed mindset mode. How do you convince someone they have everything to learn when they don’t believe they have anything to learn from you?
I saw more and more of this as growth mindset went more mainstream. People like me loved it because it gave us validation, but also because it gave us a common language to describe our thoughts and feelings. But at best, our “fixed mindset” colleagues saw it as something useful only for other people, or at worst, complete psychobabble.
In practice, this means that widespread investments in growth mindset training are unlikely to yield a significant payoff. This type of training is sort of equivalent to a gym opening in the neighborhood and expecting fitness levels to shoot up. In the vast majority of cases, people who regularly attend gyms are the very people who would find other ways to work out if the gym weren’t there. Everyone else is likely to stay on the couch.
Issue Three: It Gets Weaponized
The first issue is a slightly academic one about scope, and the second is about wasted investment. But the third? This is where things can get serious. Widespread pushing of a growth mindset culture could, under certain circumstances, lead to it being used as a weapon to limit the growth of others.
Again, Dweck was seeing elements of weaponization herself back in 2015 and warned against its consequences. She highlighted the concept of a false growth mindset in educators. Some educators were aware that a growth mindset was the “right thing to have”, so they used the terms, but exhibited fixed mindset traits as they did it. And this appeared to have a negative impact on the educational outcomes of children.
I have seen countless examples of this in corporate settings as well. Managers will make unreasonable demands of their employees, and when the employee pushes back, they are accused of “not showing a growth mindset”. Leaders will make arbitrary decisions as to who rises and who falls in an organization, citing “growth mindset” as a missing capability in those who miss out. And knowledge and experience in senior employees is seen as an active indicator of a fixed mindset, devaluing those employees.
When Catchphrase Becomes Culture
Is any of this surprising?
It really shouldn’t be. In her book, Dweck shares observations about how children learn and how their outcomes can be improved by changing their approach to learning. She makes the vital claim that a very important factor that helps children learn and grow is their understanding that they can.
That core insight remains valid, and there are important personal lessons to be learned from it. But, this doesn’t provide detailed lessons on how to instill that belief throughout an organization, or what the potential side effects might be when we attempt to do so.
To her great credit, Dweck did warn against this as well. Again from 2015 -
If we “ban” the fixed mindset, we will surely create false growth mindsets. By the way, I also fear that if we use mindset measures for accountability, we will create false growth mindsets on an unprecedented scale.
But we’ve learned since that time that you don’t even need to go as far as measuring growth mindset. Simply creating a “Growth Mindset good, Fixed Mindset bad” culture is enough for these effects to begin taking hold.
Is Growth Mindset Dead, or Should it Be?
Growth mindset is not dead. It’s too much in the popular culture, and there are too many companies teaching and consulting around it for that to happen. But there are some signs that it is beginning to fall out of fashion as a corporate culture movement.
And that’s probably a good thing.
I’ve come to believe that two things can be true at the same time regarding growth mindset: that people within organizations can grow substantially in ways they may not have perceived as possible, but also that simplistic mindset training and culture initiatives often fail to drive that growth, and sometimes even hinder it.
I believe there were signs of this at Microsoft. Some people grew hugely, and growth mindset training certainly helped them. The company did successfully transition into a highly profitable cloud services company, which in itself is a huge achievement. However, at the same time, the growth mindset push mostly benefited those who would have adjusted well anyway, and it was weaponized in some circles.
In other companies, particularly those less accustomed to change, the negative effects of this type of initiative can be far worse, and I’ve seen this firsthand in the companies I’ve worked with on culture. Therefore, as a minimum, your mileage may vary if you choose to pursue the growth mindset path.
We should, of course, never abandon the idea of helping individuals, teams, and organizations grow; however, we do need a more sophisticated approach to do so at scale.
And that’s what I’ll go into more detail on next week!
See you then!