Principled Innovation LLC

Encourage dissent

August 24th, 2007

On Wednesday, Harvard Business Online blogger Paul Michelman posted an excellent item on listening to dissenters that fits nicely with the burgeoning conversation around ungovernance. Paul points to the home mortgage crisis as an example of how paying attention to dissenting views may have helped some companies avert this disaster. He mentions the very important work of Chris Argyris on defensive reasoning and the need to balance advocacy and inquiry in all conversations, and also provides three suggestions from author Lynn Offermann on how to surface disagreement in the organization:

1. Keep visions and values front and center. It’s much easier to get sidetracked when you’re unclear about what the main track is.

2. Make sure people disagree. Remember that most of us form opinions too quickly and give them up too slowly.

3. Cultivate truth tellers. Make sure there are people in your world you can trust to tell you what you need to hear, no matter how unpopular or unpalatable it is.

This is a great list, and I would add a fourth idea to it: track dissent openly. This is a particularly important step for boards and CEOs to take if they wish to move toward an ungovernance approach that will unleash innovation. Everyone is familiar with the consent agendas that boards use to handle non-controversial items. As companion to the consent agenda, I advocate the creation of a “dissent agenda” that quite literally tracks the key strategic issues and questions around which there is dissent within the board, within the staff and within the organization as a whole. Far from being a weakness, the capacity to openly track and capably manage dissent in strategic conversations is an indicator of a very strong and healthy organization. Moreover, it is through the ability to capitalize on dissent that associations will identify the unseen gaps in member/customer needs that can be basis for innovation.

To get started, I recommend that association staff and volunteer leaders identify some of their leading dissidents and engage them in dialogue around the use of a dissent agenda as a tool to bring form and purpose to the exploration of their concerns. If your association is willing and able to listen to people who challenge conventional wisdom, prevailing orthodoxy and myopic decision-making, you will take a positive step toward the kind of more effective and more capable stewardship our community needs.

Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, Simplicity, We Have Always Done It That Way, Garage Memes, Governing for Innovation