Review of "Certainty" by Mike Mears

Score: 96/100 (9.6 out of 10)

Imagine learning leadership, communication, and strategic decision-making from a former CIA executive, senior vice-president of GE Capital, and recipient of some of the CIA and NSA's top honors! When the footnote of someone's bio is having an MBA from Harvard, you know this is someone worth hearing and learning from!

Certainty by Mike Mears is a comprehensive guide focused on leadership, organizational change, and human behavior in the workplace. Drawing from Mears’s extensive experience at the CIA and his research into psychology and management theory, the book explores how creating certainty in the workplace drives innovation, productivity, and employee engagement. The core thesis is that understanding and working with the primal instincts of the human brain is essential for effective leadership.

One of the main takeaways from this book is that the human brain is primarily wired for survival, not rational thinking. Secondly, change is perceived as a threat, triggering fight-flight-freeze responses. However, this resistance to change can also stunt or outright cripple someone's personal development and professional growth. It can also keep new ideas and innovations from seeing the light of day. Third, leadership requires understanding these instincts to reduce fear and resistance.

Do you want your workforce to be stagnant or do you want it to be exceptional?

Do you want to achieve bigger and better things, or do you want to ensure that things stay mediocre or just passable?

One of the most fascinating aspects of this book is its framing. This whole book is framed by the real-life example of Otzi, a prehistoric man who lived over 5,300 years ago and whose body was largely perserved. He became known as the "Iceman" for the wintry conditions in which he was perserved.

His remains were discovered in the Otztal Alps in 1991. His body, along with his clothing and tools, provided unprecedented insights into the life of Copper Age Europeans. In Certainty, Mears uses Otzi as a metaphor to illustrate how the primal instincts that governed survival in prehistoric times still influence modern workplace behavior. Otzi's reactions to threats and his reliance on familiar environments are likened to the modern human brain’s response to uncertainty and change in professional settings.

It goes along with the idea that we're all basically just cavemen with suits, ties, and briefcases (and now smartphones).

5,000 years isn't a long time in evolutionary terms. In other words, organisms don't experience much change in such a time. We're still wired instinctually. But what does change is the world around us—our conditions, our cultures, our societies, and our ideas.

This book discusses the delicate interplay of what's termed the auto-brain and the focused brain. The auto-brain operates on instinct, habit, and emotion—reacting quickly to perceived threats and favoring the familiar. It's the part of us that helped our ancestors, like Otzi, survive in dangerous environments. On the other hand, the focused brain is responsible for rational thought, creativity, and problem-solving. However, it’s slow, energy-consuming, and often overridden by the auto-brain.

The author makes the point that the brain is a glucose-guzzling machine that doesn't want to work harder than it has to. It's only when you challenge the mind and allow it to stretch beyond its confinements that advacements and growth can happen.

Remember, this is largely why capitalist societies tend to be more economically vibrant, viable, and prosperous than socialist ones, which are more strictly and centrally controlled. Capitalism encourages more free-thinking, innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. People are encouraged to make new things and try new things, exploring unique paths and fresh opportunities. This leads to things like the telephone, the airplane, the lightbulb, television, GPS, the microwave oven, air conditioning, the Internet, and smartphones.

Oh, and we got to the Moon first, but let's not rub that in.

This book explores how leaders can bridge the gap between the auto-brain and focused brain by creating environments that foster certainty, psychological safety, and social bonding. By understanding and leveraging the brain’s innate wiring, leaders can overcome resistance, drive innovation, and cultivate productive, engaged teams—getting things done and breaking prior limits.

A lot of this information about the auto-brain versus focused brain is based on the works of Daniel Kahneman, who received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his groundbreaking work on decision-making. This really made us think of chess. There are multiple different types of chess in which different types of players excel, largely based on time limits (or lack thereof). There are correspondence chess games that can go on days, weeks, months, or even years. Garry Kasparov, arguably the greatest chess player of all time, would outright leave the chess board in between moves to think and to allow his opponent to think.Then there's blitz chess in which games can be less than 5 minutes long! Some people who are great at correspondence chess collapse during blitz chess because they're not as adapted and accustomed to thinking so fast. However, the best of the best—the grandmasters—do tend to be rather good (if not great or exceptional) in both fast and long games, proving that the best of the best tend to have mastery of both the fast auto-brain and the concentrated, slow brain.

What kind of player are you? And how well adapted are you to using both types of your brain?

Similarly, in strength sports, athletes are often encouraged to not focus solely on absolute/brute strength but also on speed. The muscles, like the brain, have parts of them (in this case, fibers) that fire fast and slow. To maximize performance, you'd want to maximize both your fast and slow-twitch muscle fibers.

Likewise, to maximize performance in a professional capacity, you'd want to maximize both your auto-brain and focused brain.

Part of that is confronting the realities that both life and cognition are messy.

The author cleverly says that "the modern day office is a soup of social pain." What makes this passage so fitting is how it uses the analogy of a soup, something that usually includes a mix of different contents with different textures and tastes that are supposed to work together in harmony (to make a delicious meal) but can sometimes go south, such as when one ingredient is excessive (like pepper or salt).

The workplace is similar. There are a lot of different people with different types and levels of experience, motivation, goals, and ideas.

They also tend to come with their own biases.

In fact, a large part of this book is acknowledging, understanding, and confronting biases, heuristics, and errors that can limit our thinking.

There's the group attribution error, the availability heuristic, the confirmation bias, and more. All of these significantly influence workplace dynamics and how people (in general and in the workplace) think.

Mears also provides practical ways for business leaders (at all levels) to get the best out of their workers. For example, he champions what are called "prompts"—simple yet powerful cues designed to align employee behavior with organizational goals. These prompts tap into the brain's natural wiring, helping to reduce uncertainty and foster engagement.

He outlines several types of prompts, including Vision Prompts, which help employees visualize success and understand the bigger picture; Inclusion Prompts, which build a sense of belonging and trust within teams; Insight Prompts, which encourage creative thinking and innovation by guiding employees to explore new perspectives; and Focus Prompts, which direct attention and energy toward key priorities.

By incorporating these prompts into daily leadership practices, Mears argues that leaders can create environments where employees feel secure, valued, and motivated to perform at their best.

We also get some good passages like "I think, therefore I click" (to explain how clickbait works).

Does this book have any weaknesses? Well, yes. It can be more than a bit didactic and flat in its tone. There's a lot of telling in this book, and personal stories and case studies aren't as plentiful as one might hope.

Ironically, Mears even tells us that "telling is boring."

Also ironic is that the author admits that one of the greatest criticisms he received is that his previous presentations/"leadership sermons" were deemed "boring" due to a lack of stories. Indeed, this book could've used a bit more stories and case studies, especially from someone with as rich and interesting a background as Mears.

However, this book is outstanding and exceptional as is. In fact, we wish it were longer so we can learn and read more!

Check it out on Amazon!