Page 145 - HBR's 10 Must Reads 20180 - The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

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ing attendees that they don’t need to be right; they need to bring up
information that can help the team make the right decisions, which
happens when members voice their concerns and disagree. At the
Chicago Board of Trade, in-house investigators scrutinize trades
that may violate exchange rules. To avoid bias in collecting informa-
tion, they have been trained to ask open-ended interview questions,
not ones that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Leaders can
use a similar approach when discussing decisions. They should also
take care not to depend on opinions but to assess whether the data
supports or undermines the prevailing point of view.

Create dissent by default. Leaders can encourage debate during
meetings by inviting individuals to take opposing points of view;
they can also design processes to include dissent. When employ-
ees of Pal’s suggest promising ideas for new menu items, the ideas
are tested in three different stores: one whose owner-operator likes
the idea (“the protagonist”), one whose owner-operator is skeptical
(“the antagonist”), and one whose owner-operator has yet to form
a strong opinion (“the neutral”). This ensures that dissenting views
are aired and that they help inform the CEO’s decisions about pro-
posed items.

Identify courageous dissenters. Even if encouraged to push back,
many timid or junior people won’t. So make sure the team includes
people you know will voice their concerns, writes Diana McLain
Smith in The Elephant in the Room: How Relationships Make or Break
the Success of Leaders and Organizations. Once the more reluctant
employees see that opposing views are welcome, they will start to
feel comfortable dissenting as well.

Striking the Right Balance
By adopting the strategies above, leaders can fight their own and
their employees’ tendency to conform when that would hurt the
company’s interests. But to strike the optimal balance between
conformity and nonconformity, they must think carefully about the

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