The point is that we do not want a "harmonious conversation." What we want is an accurate picture of reality. Harmonious and wrong means out of business or dead people. Harmonious means thìrty-three dead on El Faro, seven dead on the space shuttle Challenger.

The fear is that dissent equals disharmony and is to be avoided.

But in organizations that

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Decisions are made by individuals, not teams. Businesses need to be able to move quickly, make bold decisions (hypotheses), and test them. Not everyone will be "on board" with every decision. That's OK. Trying to convince every dissenter that the decision is right gives too much power to those positions to stop progress. It will invite more

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What you don’t want to happen is unsustainable stress, or for people to not share failure or tell you when you’re wrong. So you need to actively fight this as the leader by: a) asking for dissent (“does everyone agree this is the right path? Does anyone disagree”? and letting a silence hang until someone speaks) b) reward debate.