Get Persian: Introduce Some Constructive Conflict

I have located this document: ‘Lets Get Persian’ at changethis.com, an idea-propagating website which I been neglecting to visit since diving head-first into my Masters. The (user-generated) content at ChangeThis can be somewhat hit and miss, but the good material there is well worth truffling out. This particular essay has some interesting things to say about executive-level teamwork. I think that it adds some depth to some of the concepts we have been studying recently. Particularly maximising the performance of our teams. Here is one quote with a very useful list.

“In addition to using what might be called a second-chance meeting to review important decisions in an unbiased light, businesses should also take advantage of other means of introducing constructive contention into their decision-making, because disagreement, managed correctly, turns out to be crucial in avoiding errors. Our research found nine additional ways to introduce disagreement and manage that disagreement so it keeps everyone on their toes without harming the camaraderie of a management team:

• Informal devil’s advocacy
• Escalation systems
• Bets
• Staring into the abyss
• Finding history that fits
• Deciding (ahead of time) how to decide
• Smoothing out management ruts
• Constructing alarm systems
• A formal devil’s advocate review