It’s been attributed to Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy and Intel’s Andy Grove. Jeff Bezos referenced it in his 2016 Letter to Shareholders. It’s the phrase, “disagree and commit.”
From Bezos: “I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with ‘I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.’ Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.”
Like so many tech-bro hacks, people have latched onto it. “We need to disagree and commit! That’s the problem with our meetings! That’s why we don’t move quickly enough!”
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Yet most teams are totally unprepared for it. What’s worse, most teams don’t even realize how unprepared they are.
In theory, disagree and commit sounds great. “We can finally get on with things! We don’t need to keep going around in circles!”
“Getting on with things” is about the commitment part of disagree and commit. But where the practice most often falls down is not with the commitment -- it’s with the disagreement.
For disagree and commit to work, members of the team have to be willing to articulate and advocate for their point of view. They have to trust each other enough to make their cases without differences of opinion being interpreted as differences of character. They have to be brave enough to own their own positions.
It can be challenging to do this. Often what we do instead is dance around issues. It’s easier to say, “I don’t think we have enough data,” than it is to say, “I disagree with what you’re saying.”
But if we haven’t fully disagreed, if we haven’t fully communicated why our opinion is this when your opinion is that, it becomes almost impossible for us to truly commit. Inside, we’re still thinking, “These idiots don’t know what they’re doing.”
Bezos further clarified the green-lit Amazon Studios project: “Note what this example is not: it’s not me thinking to myself ‘well, these guys are wrong and missing the point, but this isn’t worth me chasing.’ It’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, a chance for the team to weigh my view, and a quick, sincere commitment to go their way. And given that this team has already brought home 11 Emmys, 6 Golden Globes, and 3 Oscars, I’m just glad they let me in the room at all!”
Many people think “disagree and commit” is an easy way to get to a commitment. It’s not. It requires the hard work of disagreeing -- a practice that most of us are not well practiced in, and many teams struggle with. It requires the hard work of setting aside the disagreement to accept whatever the outcome is. It requires the hard work of recognizing that decision-making in organizations is not about winning or losing, but about advancing.
Like many things in life, “disagree and commit” is simple but not easy. But if we are willing to engage fully in discussions and arguments -- to fully disagree -- then our commitments can be transformational.