Handling Conflict with the “Disagree and Commit” and “New Information” Principles

In every executive team there are going to be times when people don’t agree on certain important strategic or operational decisions.  Some examples:

• Should we split SDRs inbound vs outbound?
• Should we map SCs to reps or pool them?
• How should we split upsell vs new business focus in mid-market reps?
• Should CSMs get paid on upsell or only renewals?
• Should we put the new buzzword (e.g., AI, ML, social) into the release plan?
• Should we change the company logo ?

The purpose of this post is to provide a framework to get decisions made and executed, without certain decisions becoming a form of weekly nagging at the e-staff meeting, a topic of discussion at every board meeting, or worst of all, a standing joke among the team.

The Disagree-and-Commit Principle

The first time I heard disagree-and-commit I thought it was corporate, doublespeak garbage.  What the heck did it mean?  I’m supposed to go to a meeting, say that I believe we should go left, get overrun by the group who eventually decides to go right, and then I’m supposed to say “sure, everybody, just kidding, let’s go right.”  How disingenuous — everybody knows I wanted to go left.  How controlling of the establishment.  How manipulative.  This is thought control!

“You may disagree, but you must conform … (wait, was that our outside voice) …  you must commit.”

(Recall my first professional job was as at a company we referred to as The People’s Republic of Ingres.)

Let’s just say I missed the point.  My older, wiser self now thinks it’s a great, but often misunderstood, rule.  (And that’s not just because now I am the establishment.)

Here’s a nice definition of disagree-and-commit from The Amazon Way via this blog post.

Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

I always missed two things:

• I took commit to mean change your mind (or “get your mind right” in the Cool Hand Luke sense). It actually means committing to execute the decision wholly, i.e., as if it were the one you had voted for.  You can’t undermine or sabotage the decision just to prove yourself right.  This is a great rule.  People aren’t always going to agree, but if you want to work at the company, you must execute our decisions wholeheartedly once they are made.  There is no other option.

• The obligation to disagree.  I love this part because some people lack the courage to speak up in the meeting, and then want to passive-aggressively work against the decision and/or attempt a pocket veto by going to the person who was in charge of the meeting and saying, “well, I didn’t feel comfortable saying this in the meeting, but, ….” Such behavior creates a potential paradox for the executive in charge — particularly if she agrees with the pocket veto argument.  Does she overrule the group decision based on the new argument (and reward dysfunctional behavior) or does she stick with a decision she no longer prefers in order to avoid incenting pocket vetoes.  In my opinion, in 95% of the cases you want say, “Sorry Joe, I wish you’d said something in the meeting because that’s an interesting point, but the decision stands.” Worst case call another meeting.  Never, ever just overrule the decision.

Explicitly embracing the disagree-and-commit principle is one great way to end endless, nagging disagreements:  we met to discuss the issue, we came to a conclusion, I know you didn’t agree with it, but you need to commit to execute it wholeheartedly.  (Else we’re going to have a conversation about insubordination.)  We want a rational culture.  We debate ideas.  But we need to make and execute decisions, and you’re not going to agree with every one.

The New Information Principle

But what if the issue keeps coming up anyway?  Perhaps via periodic serious requests to reconsider the decision.  Perhaps through a series of objections coming from someone not responsible for executing the decision (so “commit” is less relevant) — but who just can’t stand the idea.  Or maybe someone has a personal ax to grind (e.g., I know we’ve talked about this before, but can we please relocate the office) and who just won’t take no for an answer.

The problem is if you always shut down these requests, then you risk creating a big problem with corporate agility.  On one hand you want to shut down the constant nagging about adding data mining capabilities from the data mining zealot. On the other hand, you don’t want to make the subject taboo because maybe your top competitor launched a new data-mining addition last month and it’s hurting you in sales.

So, the principle is simple:  if you want to re-open discussion on something we’ve already decided, do you have any new information that wasn’t available at the time we made the decision?

If the answer is no, we’re not re-opening it here, and we can do at either next quarter’s ops review or next year’s strategy offsite (pending prioritization against other topics).

If the answer is yes, find out what the new information is, and then decide if it warrants an immediate or deferred re-examination of the decision.

With this principle you can keep a firm hand against those who won’t give up on an issue while still being open to new information that might cause the need for a  valid re-examination of it.