Book Excerpt from Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer: Deciding How to Decide

CIO — Yes-men are widely scorned. Yet entire organizations often do no better at examining all sides of a problem, raising potential shortcomings of a proposed solution or suggesting alternatives, says Michael Roberto, assistant professor at Harvard Business School. Groupthink, deference to authority and fear of being embarrassed can lead managers—even experienced CXOs—to say yes to bad decisions. In Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an Answer: Managing for Conflict and Consensus, Roberto shows why and how companies should stimulate constructive debate. By deciding how to decide, CIOs and other executives can make better decisions, build a real consensus for action, and understand the difference between a bad yes and a good yes.

How many of you have censored your views during a management meeting? Have you offered a polite nod of approval as your boss or a respected colleague puts forth a proposal, while privately harboring serious doubts? Have you immediately begun to devise ways to alter or reverse the decision at a later date?

If you have answered yes to these questions, be comforted by the fact that you are not alone. Many groups and organizations shy away from vigorous conflict and debate. For starters, managers often feel uncomfortable expressing dissent in the presence of a powerful, popular and highly successful chief executive. It becomes difficult to be candid when the boss’s presence dominates the room. We also find ourselves deferring to the technical experts in many instances, rather than challenging the pronouncements of company or industry veterans.

Certain deeply held assumptions about customers, markets and competition can become so ingrained in people’s thought processes that an entire industry finds itself blindly accepting the prevailing conventional wisdom. Pressures for conformity also arise because cohesive, relatively homogenous groups of like-minded people have worked with one another for a long time. Finally, some leaders engage in conflict avoidance because they do not feel comfortable with confrontation in a public setting. Whatever the reasons—and they are bountiful—the absence of healthy debate and dissent frequently leads to faulty decisions.

The Perils of Conflict and Dissent

Of course, dissent does not always prove to be productive; cultivating conflict has its risks. To understand the perils, we must distinguish between two forms of conflict. Suppose that you ask your management team to compare and contrast two alternative courses of action. Individuals may engage in substantive debate over issues and ideas, which we refer to as cognitive, or task-oriented, conflict. This form of disagreement exposes each proposal’s risks and weaknesses, challenges the validity of key assumptions, and might even encourage people to define the problem or opportunity confronting the firm in an entirely different light. For these reasons, cognitive conflict tends to enhance the quality of the solutions that groups produce. As former Intel CEO Andrew Grove once wrote, "Debates are like the process through which a photographer sharpens the contrast when developing a print. The clearer images that result permit management to make a more informed—and more likely correct—call."

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