Just Say “No” to Yes Men

Three ways for leaders to draw out healthy dissent

1. Keep your cards to your chest until everybody else has been heard.

2. Ask everyone to give the best argument for the opinion opposite their own.

3. Invite the quiet ones to "loud up." He who sits quietly sometimes just doesn't want to rock the boat. Sometimes boats need a good rocking: "Stan, you're awfully quiet over there. What are your thoughts on this?"

On April 17, 1961, a ragtag bunch of Cuban exiles backed by the U.S. tried to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs . The invasion was a mess. Most of the 1500 were killed or captured, and the U.S. government was forced to pay $53 million for the release of the prisoners.

Soon after the invasion, President Kennedy asked, “How could I have been so stupid to let them go ahead?” But he hadn’t been alone in the decision – the vote to go ahead had been unanimous among his senior advisers.

Officially, that is. Turns out several of them had serious doubts in their own minds, but everybody told the President what they thought he wanted to hear. A really bad idea went unchallenged, and the result was a catastrophe.

During the Missile Crisis later that year, Kennedy made a point of encouraging the collision of ideas among his advisers. They argued and disagreed and hashed out options. The result was the peaceful conclusion of a complex crisis.

If disaster is what you’re after, surround yourself with “yes” men. They’ll be good company in the lifeboat.

But the business world is different, you say. You can’t run a business unless you are united behind a single vision. That’s absolutely right in one way – and absolutely wrong in another.

Research at Yale shows that boards of directors that punish dissent and stress unity often wind up in bad business patterns, while corporations with highly contentious boards are the most successful. These are the boards where a wide range of viewpoints will be heard and tough questions asked. All ideas have to withstand a crossfire of challenge so the bad ones have a chance of being shot down.

Corporations with boards in which conformity was prized and dissent punished include Tyco, WorldCom, and Enron. ‘Nuff said?

Once a decision is made, of course, it’s time to drop the differences and band together in pursuit of that shared vision. A great leader is one who insists on the honest, open collision of ideas during the decision process, then makes it clear that everyone must walk out of the meeting united behind the final decision. Too often we stress the unity part and forget that a messy, contentious process makes it MORE likely that we’ll be unifying behind a good idea instead of a stinker.

Skip that crossfire, and you might end up standing in smiling unity behind your decision – and wondering, too late, what that tick, tick, ticking sound is.