Dare to Differ: Unlock Success through Diverse Perspectives

Beware of the consensus: Yes, Ma'am / Sir, You are right, let's do this. This is so cool, and it is the trend where everyone is going, my top competitor did this, so let's replicate it. In management, we also call this Monkey See, Monkey Do, which numerous experiments have proved. The herd mentality of the human being can slip into meeting rooms very quickly, and it can be investment-heavy for your business if these biases drive the decision.

Disagreement is evidence of a group's capability to come up with divergent ideas. If everything has to converge, all companies in pretty much all the industries will look and offer relatively the same products.

I don't have to go too far to help you visualize this - pick up a category of Sedan, say premium Sedan, and you will see the products the top five automobile companies offer almost resemble each other. I agree that market size is bigger enough to accommodate similar products from different producers but that’s not what I am pointing to.

The approach with Devil's Advocate is how one determines an undervalued stock, divergent ideas and support the outliers.

Intentions don't matter - mechanisms do.

Next time you find yourself in a group seeking conformity and consensus or saying Yes too soon in a meeting room, follow these steps

1. revisit the ask
2. prepare your points ahead of time and share them with meeting participants
3. appoint a devil advocate role in the meeting and most importantly rotate this role to avoid painting a negative perception with one member of the firm
4. let the junior member in the team speak first
5. design meeting to promote debate, and support outliers

Once decisions are made following this process, it can still fail, outcome is a HOPE, a probability, if its not achieved - all people own it equally as they followed this approach.