vuja de

MaryW commented on the word vuja de

On a trip to London last month, I had at last the opportunity to read Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, the new book by our keynote speaker for the InsideNGO 2016 Annual Conference, Adam Grant. Early in the book, Grant discusses how as human beings our nature is to "rationalize the status quo as legitimate." He calls this the "default system" and highlights the many perils of taking the status quo for granted and never questioning the default assumptions we make.

To counter this, Grant suggests flipping the old idea of déjà vu where we encounter something new but feel like we have experienced it before to a new approach, vuja de. Vuja de, Grant writes, "is the reverse—we face something familiar, but we see it with a fresh perspective that enables us to gain new insight from old problems."

February 5, 2018