Capitalizing On Dissent

Often times product managers and strategists fight to suppress dissent because Western culture is practically founded on the principle of building consensus. The idea of managing and capitalizing on dissent is counter-intuitive to some. In reality, dissent and disagreement are invaluable and should be capitalized on.

Economist, Noreena Hertz has studied this phenomenon and in a TED Talk, she provides a nugget of wisdom about how to capitalize on dissenting opinions and use them to make better decisions. Her conclusions should be of tremendous value to business strategists product managers the world over. In her presentation titled “How to use experts — and when not to” (watch the whole video above) she describes an example of how Google CEO Eric Schmidt does exactly this:

“In meetings, he looks out for the person in the room — arms crossed, looking a bit bemused — and draws them into the discussion, trying to see if they indeed are the person with a different opinion, so that they have dissent within the room.”

This strategy, implemented on a wider scale can provide concrete and repeatable results as Herz describes in yet another example of managing dissent found at consumer electronics giant, Best Buy:

“Best Buy, the consumer electronics company, gets all its employees — the cleaners, the shop assistants, the people in the back office, not just its forecasting team — to place bets, yes bets, on things like whether or not a product is going to sell well before Christmas, on whether customers’ new ideas should be taken on by the company, on whether a project will come in on time.”

This technique is key to delivering excellence as project managers. We have to put aside our preconceived notions and tap into all the hidden sources of human knowledge that are most involved with the product. Accordingly, because half of the process of product management comes down to strategy, to be successful strategists we need to employ the same approach. As  Herz demonstrates Best Buy seems to have this strategy already baked into its strategic DNA:

“By leveraging and by embracing the expertise within the company, Best Buy was able to discover, for example, that the store that it was going to open in China — its big, grand store — was not going to open on time. Because when it asked its staff, all its staff, to place their bets on whether they thought the store would open on time or not, a group from the finance department placed all their chips on that not happening. It turned out that they were aware, as no one else within the company was, of a technological blip that neither the forecasting experts, nor the experts on the ground in China, were even aware of. “

According to Hertz, “Managing dissent is about recognizing the value of disagreement, discord and difference.” When it comes to developing successful strategies and superior products, the value of managing and capitalizing dissent can’t be understated.