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Friday 12 May 2017

Power to the people with "Disagree and Commit"

In early April, Jeff Bezos sent out a shareholder letter which said something quite profound, in just three words.

Disagree and commit.

"What," we might ask, "Does that mean?"

It means that we run our idea past our leader. Even if our boss disagrees with it, they are not going to give us the third degree, providing our proposal has met our normal in-house evaluation criteria. Instead, our boss is going to let us run with it, and will be committed to us knowing our jobs, and being focused on doing the right thing by the organisation.

Wow.

Just imagine that amount of autonomy.

What the Amazon CEO said was:
Disagee and commit saves "a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there's no consensus, it's helpful to say, 'Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?' By the time you're at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you'll probably get a quick yes."(Heath, 13 April 2017)
As Basario said, our leaders often "refuse to green-light any project that strays outside their comfort zone, or they indirectly sabotage the project by not providing the resources or support it would need to succeed" (13 April 2017).

Because, as Basario closes, "when you go all in with people you trust, good things tend to happen" (13 April 2017).

And ain't that the truth.




Sam

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3 comments :

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