If you work at a tech company you've probably heard some Riddler-esque catch phrases throw around. "Let's work backwards from the goal, but wary of one way doors... if we can't agree then disagree and commit'. You can thank the now jacked ex-Amazon CEO above for these gems.
Scott McNealy used the phrase as part of the line "Agree and commit, disagree and commit, or get out of the way". The concept has also been credited to Andrew Grove at Intel, but it really became mainstream when Amazon added "Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit" as one of its leadership principles.
I like disagree and commit in concept as it should help make decisions faster with no hurt feelings. It is super easy to say, much harder to do. Here is why:
- Trust is at the heart of this pact on the individual and org level. Without mutual trust, then people will say they commit but deep down be skeptical and won't follow through. If the culture isn't there to reinforce the decisions and have repercussions, then its all talk. I encountered this at a previous role where engineers wouldn't trust the product recommendation and would agree in reviews, but then drag their feet on a project.
- People take it personally and don't like giving up control of the decision. It makes them feel like their opinion didn't matter, especially if its a very controversial topic. The tie breaker is most often the person with the highest title, which hurts the feeling of autonomy for the reports. Why work on pushing for something if ultimately the Hippo (Highest Paid Person's Opinion) always decides? I've seen examples of this where specific people were used to making a decision but then had new cross functional partners join that were tasked at owning a decision. This caused friction and what felt like resentment.
So what can you do to improve this?
- Earn trust. Again easier said than done. Get some points on the board with some easy wins, deposit more relationship equity in the bank. Show people you've done your homework throughly and that you know the user, market, competition, and product better than anyone.
- Define clear decision makers, and it doesn't always have to be a HIPPO. In one of my previous roles, decisions often got mucked up until I was able to better define what is a product decision vs an eng vs design decision.
- Make it clear if it is a two way door and the decision doesn't work, this is how you will evaluate that and then have a way to course correct
- Try to frame the disagreement in an objective way. "We all can agree we want X, but our teams are optimizing for different things in order to get there"
- Escalate earlier than you think. Don't think of escalation as a bad thing, think of it as a healthy way to ask for help and move forward. One of the worst things that can happen is banging your head on a decision, getting worn down, and then one of your leaders asks "why didn't you flag this earlier"
I'd love to hear how others have found good ways to actually agreed to disagree at work.
Technical Program Manager
11 个月Spot-on that earning trust (and spending as needed) is critical for non-unanimous decisions. If someone's not 100% on board with the decision, at least if you have trust then they are reassured their perspective will be considered/acknowledged and perhaps be valuable again in the future. For project work, the key is to get everyone on board and doing their best no matter what the decision is. I sometimes see "Disagree and Commit and Undermine." Undermine is usually subtle... perhaps instead of being their usual creative leader / active problem solver they'd they'd become only reactive on particular work.