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Overall great, but I've always disliked this: > Have strong opinions loosely held It comes out of the very true reality of needing to pick a direction and lea

Overall great, but I've always disliked this: > Have strong opinions loosely held It comes out of the very true reality of needing to pick a direction and lean in hard. For example, Postgres vs MySQL. Almost anywhere either would do, but you can't split the baby. Pick one or the other and carry on. The part that breaks down for me is when people start talking about having strong opinions. Why on earth would I have a strong opinion that I hold weakly? I'm just honest with people. We went with Postgres because we had to choose one or the other, but both would have worked. The things I have strong opinions on are the very things that are not weakly held. "One shouldn't use Ruby for feature extraction on video at scale." It would take a lot to convince me otherwise, hence the strong opinion. I find some people have trouble thinking in non-discrete ways. For example, I know this smart guy but he's just irrationally pissed off at five star rating systems and he only ever gives 1 star or 5 stars. He considers it a usability failure because he'd rather do a thumbs up or thumbs down. I discovered this only after complaining that the five star system was not continuous enough for me. I wanted to give something 4.8 stars because it was great, but had some slight flaws.

lemoncucumber 8y ago
I think it's more about committing to a direction/approach but being willing change directions in the face of new data or changing circumstances. If there's no one making decisions that's obviously a problem, but if there is someone making decisions and they're unwilling to reevaluate those decisions that's also a problem. It's not that as a leader you should have a strong opinion about something you know nothing about. Rather, you should gather data and fully commit to a decision that is supported by that data, while being willing to revisit the decision in the face of new data.
sailfast 8y ago
You make a good point, but I don't think loose = weak here. Loosely held, to me, indicates that you are willing to consider other options when presented rather than ignoring what's out there. So have a strong opinion, but be ready to listen when other options are presented. This, in my mind, does not equate to _weakness_ of opinion, just ensuring you are actually _hearing_ things.
- ngngngng 8y ago
  It's just more nuanced than the phrase acknowledges. I have a strong opinion that Go allows developers and teams to be much more productive than Java. But i'm not going to to complain if someone above me in an organization makes the call for Java. Does that make the opinion weakly held? I don't think so. If I was calling the shots there's no way i'd pick Java over Go.
  - sailfast 8y ago
    This interpretation also makes total sense and was different than I was considering - nice! Continue to have the opinion but don't let it stop you from being productive when presented with circumstances that don't match with those opinions.
deleted 8y ago
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scarejunba 8y ago
It's a decision making framework that places the "Anything is fine. You choose" option at the bottom in terms of value. By the way, weakly is not a synonym of loosely in this context. Weakly/strongly here is having no opinion vs having one. Loosely means "ability to be convinced is high". Weak: I don't care where we eat tonight. Strong, non loose: I'll only go if we'll eat at Tadich. Strong, loose: - I want to go eat at Tadich. - That's mostly sea food and I have an allergy. How about Hakkasan? - Sure, let's go eat at Hakkasan.

lemoncucumber 8y ago

I think it's more about committing to a direction/approach but being willing change directions in the face of new data or changing circumstances. If there's no one making decisions that's obviously a problem, but if there is someone making decisions and they're unwilling to reevaluate those decisions that's also a problem. It's not that as a leader you should have a strong opinion about something you know nothing about. Rather, you should gather data and fully commit to a decision that is supported by that data, while being willing to revisit the decision in the face of new data.

sailfast 8y ago

You make a good point, but I don't think loose = weak here. Loosely held, to me, indicates that you are willing to consider other options when presented rather than ignoring what's out there. So have a strong opinion, but be ready to listen when other options are presented. This, in my mind, does not equate to _weakness_ of opinion, just ensuring you are actually _hearing_ things.

ngngngng 8y ago
It's just more nuanced than the phrase acknowledges. I have a strong opinion that Go allows developers and teams to be much more productive than Java. But i'm not going to to complain if someone above me in an organization makes the call for Java. Does that make the opinion weakly held? I don't think so. If I was calling the shots there's no way i'd pick Java over Go.
- sailfast 8y ago
  This interpretation also makes total sense and was different than I was considering - nice! Continue to have the opinion but don't let it stop you from being productive when presented with circumstances that don't match with those opinions.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

scarejunba 8y ago

It's a decision making framework that places the "Anything is fine. You choose" option at the bottom in terms of value. By the way, weakly is not a synonym of loosely in this context. Weakly/strongly here is having no opinion vs having one. Loosely means "ability to be convinced is high". Weak: I don't care where we eat tonight. Strong, non loose: I'll only go if we'll eat at Tadich. Strong, loose: - I want to go eat at Tadich. - That's mostly sea food and I have an allergy. How about Hakkasan? - Sure, let's go eat at Hakkasan.