From the Harvard Business Review:
It’s tough to find examples of successfully challenging the boss,
even tougher to find stories of leaders who specifically ask to be
challenged. The most common is a tale of Alfred P. Sloan at General
Motors. During a meeting in which GM’s top management team was
considering a weighty decision, Sloan closed the meeting by asking.”
“Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision
here?” Sloan then waited as each member of the assembled committee
nodded in agreement. Sloan continued, “Then, I propose we postpone
further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give
ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some
understanding of what this decision is about.”
What Sloan was looking for was something many of us seek to
eliminate: dissent. There’s a lot of discussion on how leaders ought to
cast a vision, gain buy-in, or steer a group to consensus. There’s a lot
less discussion on how leaders ought to cultivate a culture that values
the right kind of criticism.
That criticism is what Sloan was looking
for, and what research tells us we need in order to make the best
decision.
When ideas are still being developed or decisions still being
considered, criticism and constructive conflict are vital to testing the
value of the ideas and helping increase that value. Conflict is an
indicator that diverse viewpoints are being considered and that the
competition for ideas is still ongoing. During this competition, ideas
are strengthened through further research, consideration or through the
blending of different ideas into one stronger concept. By contrast, when
everyone in a group always agrees, it can indicate that the group
doesn’t have very many ideas, or that they value agreement more than
quality suggestions.
In one study of conflict and decision-making, participants were
divided into three experimental conditions (control, brainstorming, and
debate) and formed into teams within those conditions. Each team was
tasked with generating ideas for the same challenge: how to reduce
traffic congestion in the San Francisco Bay area. The “control” teams
were given no further instructions and told to develop as many ideas as
possible. The “brainstorming” teams were given the traditional set of
brainstorming rules, chief among those rules was the notion that all
judgment should be suspended and no idea criticized or debated. The
final, “debate” teams were given a set of rules similar to the
“brainstorming” teams but with one important difference. Instead of
deferring judgment, they were told to debate and criticize others’ ideas
as they were generated.
When the results were calculated, the winners were clear. While teams
in the brainstorming condition did generate more ideas than the teams
given no instructions, it was the teams in the debate condition that
outperformed the rest, producing an average of 25 percent more ideas
than the other two conditions in the same period of time. Even after the
teams had disbanded, the influence of criticism on generating ideas
continued. In follow-up interviews with each subject, researchers asked
the participants if they had any more ideas for solving the traffic
problem. Each participant from the control and brainstorming conditions
did have one or two more ideas, but participants in the debate condition
gave an average of seven additional ideas per person. Teams that
utilized conflict in their process consistently outperformed teams that
focused on cohesion. In a summary of the study’s results, the
researchers write “Our findings show that debate and criticism do not
inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them relative to every other
condition.” The researchers had discovered what Sloan seemed to already
know, that cultivating criticism and dissent could yield more quantity
of ideas, and that quantity could help make better quality decisions.
Sloan wasn’t the first to recognize that dissent and criticism could
help strengthen decision. One organization has been doing it for
centuries: the Catholic Church. Starting with Pope Sixtus V in 1587, the
Catholic Church assigned one special dissenter to find and present
reasons for why nominated candidates should not be canonized as saints.
This person was referred to as the Defender of the Faith, or more
commonly the “Devil’s Advocate.” Taking special care to consider a
dissenting view provided an alternative perspective that strengthened
their decisions. From 1857 to 1983, when the Devil’s Advocate policy was
removed, 98 individuals were named saints. From 1983 until today, over
500 hundred people have been granted sainthood. While it’s difficult to
compare the quality of decisions before and after the reform, the impact
of the policy on the Church’s decision-making process is clear.
If assigning a lone dissenter to be the bearer of bad tidings may not
suit your team, consider the technique used by a notable but vastly
different organization: Pixar. During the long process of creating a
blockbuster film, the teams at Pixar rely on criticism to make their
work stronger. To keep the benefits of criticism without the negativism,
Pixar uses an idea called “plussing.” Plussing means that anytime
someone comments on another work, that comment must contain a “plus” — a
way to improve or build on the work. Plussing gives the director or
animator something they need besides just a critique, it gives them a
place to build from and improve their work. Through plussing, Pixar has
found a formula for keeping criticism positive, while positively
improving the quality of their work.
Whether you rely on centuries old techniques like the devil’s
advocate, new methods such as plussing, or just choose to postpone
meetings until someone brings in a counterpoint, your teams will make
better decisions when you cultivate a little positive criticism.
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