Skeptical Cat

The other day I was listening to a keynote on YouTube by Dr. Julian Sanchez from John Deere Technology Innovation Center. He interestingly brought up the story of the skeptical cats. He joked that you should not have the compliance team as your skeptical cats. Jokes aside, this has an important message.

It is always good to have skeptical cats on your team, except that they should not derail your project. While skeptical, they should lean towards successful execution of the program. The idea behind skeptical cats is to collect opposing viewpoints that open the door for more discussions. The emphasis should be on mutual, evidence-based discourse while exploring issues and challenging misinformation. A continuing discussion of evidence-based strategies gives us new tools as we seek open dialogue that produces meaningful output.

I had personally come across similar experiences and always encouraged opposing views and skeptical cats in the room. So, next time when you come across such people in your program use it as an opportunity to validate your assumptions and strategy. Also, please make sure that they don’t derail your plans.

Regards, Saju Skaria

Hope this message inspires my readers. If you are finding my postings useful, I invite you to FOLLOW me and share the article and provide your feedback.