8 ms·

In praise of dissenters: It pays to encourage a variety of opinions

85 points by jkuria 7y ago

pbreit 7y ago
Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously? "Do you think this project will be successful? Why or why not?"
- logicallee 7y ago
  >Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously? There is an interesting way to do this anonymously in a larger organization where people don't trust the anonymity of their votes: you can ask everyone to flip a coin and report it in answer to: "Consider whether the project will be successful (yes/no.) We will survey responses anonymously/statistically. In this way no individual reporting will be known. A single time (don't repeat this for this question), flip a coin. Consider whether the project will be successful (yes/no), then choose one of the two options: [1] You both think the project will be successful (yes) AND you flipped heads. [2] You either don't think the project will be successful, or you flipped tails (or both). In other words, anyone flipping tails must pick 2. So on an individual level, you have plausible deniability, since you can say you support the project but flipped tails. Statistically, we will measure what percentage below 50 flipped heads, to see how many people think our project will fail." Due to this methodology, people can voice dissent. In toxic despotic environments, you will have 100% heads. (Which should not be possible, since you can only go below 50% for heads at a statistically significant level, not above.) I'm not sure what size organization this can work at statistically but it's an interesting method.
- yummypaint 7y ago
  I have heard of prompting people with something like "imagine we proceeded as planned and the project failed. Write a brief history of that failure." I havent seen this tried, but would be interested to hear from people who have.
- flukus 7y ago
  I don't trust the anonymity and without that you can't trust the honesty. These surveys always get sent out with some sort of id/token in an email and after that you're feeding data into a black box where you have no idea what kind of information is being stored and how much of that information is available to the creators the survey. If there were some sort of neutral third party (like a non-profit or maybe a union) running the survey I might have some trust, but companies in this space like survey monkey are not neutral, they're beholden to whoever pays them.
  - intarga 7y ago
    You could just do it the old school way: print out responses and put them in a ballot box.
neonate 7y ago
https://outline.com/mEjNBa https://outline.com/mEjNBa https://web.archive.org/web/20191013235042/https://www.economist.com/business/2019/10/10/in-praise-of-dissenters https://web.archive.org/web/20191013235042/https://www.econo...
eecsninja 7y ago
The problem is that large organizations like government agencies and corporations don't want alternate opinions, except in the rare cases where they specifically have a devil's advocate position to test the validity of ideas. Better performance isn't an argument that sways these organizations that care more about preserving the status quo than about success in their stated goals.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago
  Differing opinions are seen as an annoying impediment to decision making: yet another variable that needs to be weighed up eye-roll. Management is easier when everyone just agrees and when Management is easy then Managers are happy, which generally means employees feel less "under the microscope". Therefore alternative opinions have the appearance of working against both (lazy) Managers and (paranoid) employees. There's only a small percentage of humanity that are either willing, or unaware, enough to potentially get off-side with their boss and peers to provide dissenting opinion. Despite the great long-term value there is in attacking problems with the knowledge of the various angles of entry and exit. It's sad, but human nature. And here we find ourselves in a world of our own making.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    It's purely a cultural construct. Companies, societies, families, organizations, universities, etc. all have different internal cultures that dictate the social behavior of those in the group. When a culture of diverse opinion is encouraged and supported by official and implicit policy, it tends to thrive.
- mcv 7y ago
  The point of the article is that they should want alternate opinions. An army of yes-men is not going to be good at critically evaluating the merits of a project. To give an example from a completely different field, I think this might be a big reason behind the problems with the Star Wars prequels: when he made the original movies, George Lucas was a young, new director, and people weren't afraid to tell him no and offer suggestions to improve his ideas. By the time he made the prequels, he was a Legend and of course he was right about everything. It's important to have people who aren't afraid to criticise your ideas. Even if it makes the people in charge uncomfortable. Or perhaps especially if it makes them uncomfortable.
dbuder 7y ago
"People from different backgrounds approach problems from different angles—that much should be blindingly obvious." It's not obvious and in my experience is nonsense when it comes to the workplace, it doesn't matter what color your skin is or where you grew up, if you're at company x it's because you fit through the same sieve and have the social awareness to shut up and conform. I have both observed and learned the hard way again and again that even a good solution to a long term problem will be ignored or treated with hostility. You are more likely to be fired for your suggestion box submission than your idea implemented.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  Right. If everyone in an organisation is a graduate of the same handful of universities, attended the same lectures from the same professors, read the same books, is about the same age etc then where is the actual diversity?
  - gonzo41 7y ago
    In my fathers life you would see and hear stories of people who started in the mailroom / loading dock and, they made it all the way to the top. That doesn't exist anymore. And if you catch the hiring threads here every once and a while. You can see people hire for 'cultural' fit. Few if any people would hire for conflict or dissent.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      In fairness, the journey from loading dock to executive suite probably included enough sieving and sanding to produce a fairly precise cultural fit. That is, the loading dock supervisors probably possess more variety than the VPs, but less than the loading dock workers they supervise. How likely is a person who has spent an entire career climbing one ladder to have any ideas foreign to the organization?
      - gonzo41 7y ago
        My point was more that they had that job for a time, and that shaped them. Falling out of the Ivy League and into a job with friends in SC and then climbing the ladder up doesn't expose you the rungs of people in life.
otabdeveloper4 7y ago
Unless they're misogynists or skeptical of "climate change", then it's best to burn them at the stake, just to be safe that the crimethink isn't contagious.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  > Unless they're misogynists The article notes that an important factor of success is psychological safety. Makes it rather more difficult to ensure that when you have employees who bear hatred towards roughly 50% of the population. Are you seriously defending misogyny as a useful character trait? > skeptical of "climate change" What does this have to do with the average workplace's diversity?
  - azangru 7y ago
    > who bear hatred towards roughly 50% of the population Either the word misogyny is not used in this sense anymore, or the word "hatred" has changed its meaning. It's too common nowadays to see men being accused of misogyny for poor control of sexual impulses (not necessarily at the time of the accusation, but at any point in the past), or for expressing scepticism about certain political claims of feminists. Whatever that is, it can hardly be described as "hatred".
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      I mean okay, you could change it from "hatred" to "prejudice" or "animosity", and it doesn't change my point much, does it?
    - mcv 7y ago
      Maybe 'hatred' is too broad, but surely it's not hard to see that people are likely to be uncomfortable to share their opinion in front of people who disagree that they should have an equal voice merely for being who they are.
      - azangru 7y ago
p4bl0 7y ago
I think it's Rosa Luxemburg who said "freedom is always the freedom of dissenters". I believe that's true, the problem is knowing who are the dissenters, as many political groups want that label while many of them do not deserve it at all (obvious example: Trump presenting himself as an anti-system candidate).
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Huh? Freedom of speech is for everyone regardless of their label.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    The quote means that freedom really exists when it applies to all, including those who disagree with the government/powerful/majority. I.e. the freedom of the dissenters is the measure of freedom in the group.
    - mcv 7y ago
      Exactly. The people in power, the dominant social group, etc, are rarely short in freedom. It's the people who don't fit in that are most at risk of losing their freedom. Of speech or otherwise.
  - p4bl0 7y ago
    I think you misunderstand the quote. It says that the level of freedom in a given society is comparable to that of dissenters. Of course people who are in favor of the system and benefit from it will never be the one who are censored. But the fact that they are not censored is not a good measure of the freedom in that system.
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    Right, but non-controversial speech doesn't need protecting - there's no question of freedom there. Freedom of speech means the freedom to say things that other people wish you wouldn't say. Only controversial speech needs protecting, so in a sense, controversial speech is the only kind that freedom of speech is concerned with.
fetbaffe 7y ago
This is article is nothing more than a hidden message of praise to migration, however empirically it is not true, the two most successful economies in the world from about 1870 to 1970 was Sweden & Japan, the two most homogenic countries at that time. It is very simplistic to assume that variety of opinions will lead to success, it definitely can, but it can also be a barrier. Variety of opinion must be within some parameters, too much variety can hinder progress, if your team is not even on the same page of what your are building then it will be very hard to get anything done.
- AllegedAlec 7y ago
  I'm always sceptical when people say that diversity of colour somehow leads to diversity of thought.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Not diversity of colour by itself maybe, but diversity of culture, and diversity of experience, are rather vital if you want multiple viewpoints and experiences to be represented. But there are more viewpoints than just cultural ones; no culture is completely homogenous in opinion.
  - meheleventyone 7y ago
    A concrete example would be developing facial recognition algorithms. There are now several examples of them not working with black faces. It's definitely a lack of diversity of thought to not think about whole segments of society when designing such things. At the very least diversity of physical characteristics on the development team would help remind them they exist. More usually its that physical characteristics represent lives that are inaccessible to people without them. So people with different skin color, disabilities, sex, gender and background are all reasonable proxies for diversity of thought by the fact that these people all have very different lived experiences.
- jamesrcole 7y ago
  > This is article is nothing more than a hidden message of praise to migration That is not true at all. From the article: the key to dealing with this problem is “cognitive diversity”. In other words, assembling a team of people with different perspectives and intellectual backgrounds. It is not just about selecting people for teams from both sexes and various ethnicities (though that, too). Hire only Cambridge politics graduates (or Harvard MBAs or Stanford software engineers) and they will have studied under the same professors and absorbed similar world views, regardless of their gender or skin colour. There are two elements to selecting a good team. First, assemble people with diverse viewpoints. ... A study of over 300 projects by the Rotterdam School of Management found that those led by junior managers were more likely to succeed than those led by senior managers—maybe because other team members were less intimidated about pointing out potential pitfalls to someone lower down the pecking order. Your characterisation of the article as "nothing more than a hidden message of praise to migration" is completely off the mark, and it makes me think your comment was driven by a strong agenda.
mcv 7y ago
I'm unable to read the article at the moment, but I certainly agree with the title. I recently had to hire 4 new developers for my team, and I found 4 I'm really happy with, but the one I'm most happy with is the one I hired primary because he was very opinionated, and now after two weeks, he's already having a major positive impact on our way of working. By contrast, the two developers with the most experience on paper are very timid, and it's hard to get a straight answer out of them. It's probably a cultural issue. Which makes it extra annoying, because in many situation, it's valuable to have opinions from all cultures represented, and not just the most direct cultures.
- afarrell 7y ago
  I'm curious which phrase you find is a better expression of this dev's communication: - "Strong opinions, weakly held" - "Clear opinions, openly offered"
  - mcv 7y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by this. That opinionated dev comes across to me as having strong opinions, which he expresses clearly when relevant. But when I disagree, he sees my point and is willing to do it my way if I insist, which I rarely do, because he often has a good point.
  - intarga 7y ago
    Those two don't appear mutually exclusive
- yodsanklai 7y ago
  > I'm most happy with is the one I hired primary because he was very opinionated, and now after two weeks, he's already having a major positive impact on our way of working It's also good that you are willing to listen to his advice. It sometimes hard for opinions to be heard in conservative environments. It should be the role of a good manager to make sure that everyone is encouraged to share his views, especially those who wouldn't do it naturally. Sometimes, I'm amazed that so many people simply keep their mouth shut even if they totally disagree with their management or project organization!
johnwish007 7y ago
We need a diversity of opinions for sure, people without opinions are just Yes Men.
hogFeast 7y ago
Totally misunderstands "psychological safety". The reason why people are afraid of speaking up is because of an excess of "psychological safety", not a deficit. It is because the boss needs to feel "safe". That culture comes from and is for the senior staff. It is funny because I have seen companies understand this and try to hire a diverse group. But they do everything else in a very rigid, hierarchical way. So most junior people end up leaving, and the senior people go on as before. One particular firm has been doing diverse hiring for close to three decades...their senior staff is still composed of the good old boys who have their come to Christ moment about diversity every few years but never change themselves. You really have to focus on those senior people to understand this. Everyone says they want diversity, they may even hire diverse...but when a junior person is telling them why they are wrong, they will utterly lose their shit. I do know places that have comfortably achieved diversity too. But the thinking required is basically antithetical to everything that people are taught about how to behave i.e. think things through for yourself, don't think emotionally, be prepared to be wrong and change your mind when that occurs, etc.
jackgavigan 7y ago
The practice of purging the ranks of "difficult" subordinates - people who question the wisdom of conventional thinking, who challenge their superiors, who do not automatically salute and say "yes sir, yes, sir, six bags full", when their superiors speak - over the years has produced a crop of senior officials long on form and short on substance. The long-term result of stifling dissent and discouraging unconventional views, while rewarding those who conform, is an officer corps that is sterile, stagnant, and predictable. Promoting clones, while purging mavericks, is tantamount to incest. We all know the possible long-term effect of generations of incest - feeblemindedness, debilitation, and insanity. -- Colonel James G Burton, The Pentagon Wars (1992)
- celticmusic 7y ago
  That quote is brutal in it's simplicity, bluntness, and distinct lack of cleverness. I love it.

85 points by jkuria 7y ago

Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously? "Do you think this project will be successful? Why or why not?"

logicallee 7y ago
>Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously? There is an interesting way to do this anonymously in a larger organization where people don't trust the anonymity of their votes: you can ask everyone to flip a coin and report it in answer to: "Consider whether the project will be successful (yes/no.) We will survey responses anonymously/statistically. In this way no individual reporting will be known. A single time (don't repeat this for this question), flip a coin. Consider whether the project will be successful (yes/no), then choose one of the two options: [1] You both think the project will be successful (yes) AND you flipped heads. [2] You either don't think the project will be successful, or you flipped tails (or both). In other words, anyone flipping tails must pick 2. So on an individual level, you have plausible deniability, since you can say you support the project but flipped tails. Statistically, we will measure what percentage below 50 flipped heads, to see how many people think our project will fail." Due to this methodology, people can voice dissent. In toxic despotic environments, you will have 100% heads. (Which should not be possible, since you can only go below 50% for heads at a statistically significant level, not above.) I'm not sure what size organization this can work at statistically but it's an interesting method.
yummypaint 7y ago
I have heard of prompting people with something like "imagine we proceeded as planned and the project failed. Write a brief history of that failure." I havent seen this tried, but would be interested to hear from people who have.
flukus 7y ago
I don't trust the anonymity and without that you can't trust the honesty. These surveys always get sent out with some sort of id/token in an email and after that you're feeding data into a black box where you have no idea what kind of information is being stored and how much of that information is available to the creators the survey. If there were some sort of neutral third party (like a non-profit or maybe a union) running the survey I might have some trust, but companies in this space like survey monkey are not neutral, they're beholden to whoever pays them.
- intarga 7y ago
  You could just do it the old school way: print out responses and put them in a ballot box.

neonate 7y ago

https://outline.com/mEjNBa https://outline.com/mEjNBa https://web.archive.org/web/20191013235042/https://www.economist.com/business/2019/10/10/in-praise-of-dissenters https://web.archive.org/web/20191013235042/https://www.econo...

eecsninja 7y ago

The problem is that large organizations like government agencies and corporations don't want alternate opinions, except in the rare cases where they specifically have a devil's advocate position to test the validity of ideas. Better performance isn't an argument that sways these organizations that care more about preserving the status quo than about success in their stated goals.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago
Differing opinions are seen as an annoying impediment to decision making: yet another variable that needs to be weighed up eye-roll. Management is easier when everyone just agrees and when Management is easy then Managers are happy, which generally means employees feel less "under the microscope". Therefore alternative opinions have the appearance of working against both (lazy) Managers and (paranoid) employees. There's only a small percentage of humanity that are either willing, or unaware, enough to potentially get off-side with their boss and peers to provide dissenting opinion. Despite the great long-term value there is in attacking problems with the knowledge of the various angles of entry and exit. It's sad, but human nature. And here we find ourselves in a world of our own making.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  It's purely a cultural construct. Companies, societies, families, organizations, universities, etc. all have different internal cultures that dictate the social behavior of those in the group. When a culture of diverse opinion is encouraged and supported by official and implicit policy, it tends to thrive.
mcv 7y ago
The point of the article is that they should want alternate opinions. An army of yes-men is not going to be good at critically evaluating the merits of a project. To give an example from a completely different field, I think this might be a big reason behind the problems with the Star Wars prequels: when he made the original movies, George Lucas was a young, new director, and people weren't afraid to tell him no and offer suggestions to improve his ideas. By the time he made the prequels, he was a Legend and of course he was right about everything. It's important to have people who aren't afraid to criticise your ideas. Even if it makes the people in charge uncomfortable. Or perhaps especially if it makes them uncomfortable.

dbuder 7y ago

"People from different backgrounds approach problems from different angles—that much should be blindingly obvious." It's not obvious and in my experience is nonsense when it comes to the workplace, it doesn't matter what color your skin is or where you grew up, if you're at company x it's because you fit through the same sieve and have the social awareness to shut up and conform. I have both observed and learned the hard way again and again that even a good solution to a long term problem will be ignored or treated with hostility. You are more likely to be fired for your suggestion box submission than your idea implemented.

goatinaboat 7y ago
Right. If everyone in an organisation is a graduate of the same handful of universities, attended the same lectures from the same professors, read the same books, is about the same age etc then where is the actual diversity?
- gonzo41 7y ago
  In my fathers life you would see and hear stories of people who started in the mailroom / loading dock and, they made it all the way to the top. That doesn't exist anymore. And if you catch the hiring threads here every once and a while. You can see people hire for 'cultural' fit. Few if any people would hire for conflict or dissent.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    In fairness, the journey from loading dock to executive suite probably included enough sieving and sanding to produce a fairly precise cultural fit. That is, the loading dock supervisors probably possess more variety than the VPs, but less than the loading dock workers they supervise. How likely is a person who has spent an entire career climbing one ladder to have any ideas foreign to the organization?
    - gonzo41 7y ago
      My point was more that they had that job for a time, and that shaped them. Falling out of the Ivy League and into a job with friends in SC and then climbing the ladder up doesn't expose you the rungs of people in life.

otabdeveloper4 7y ago

Unless they're misogynists or skeptical of "climate change", then it's best to burn them at the stake, just to be safe that the crimethink isn't contagious.

TulliusCicero 7y ago
> Unless they're misogynists The article notes that an important factor of success is psychological safety. Makes it rather more difficult to ensure that when you have employees who bear hatred towards roughly 50% of the population. Are you seriously defending misogyny as a useful character trait? > skeptical of "climate change" What does this have to do with the average workplace's diversity?
- azangru 7y ago
  > who bear hatred towards roughly 50% of the population Either the word misogyny is not used in this sense anymore, or the word "hatred" has changed its meaning. It's too common nowadays to see men being accused of misogyny for poor control of sexual impulses (not necessarily at the time of the accusation, but at any point in the past), or for expressing scepticism about certain political claims of feminists. Whatever that is, it can hardly be described as "hatred".
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    I mean okay, you could change it from "hatred" to "prejudice" or "animosity", and it doesn't change my point much, does it?
  - mcv 7y ago
    Maybe 'hatred' is too broad, but surely it's not hard to see that people are likely to be uncomfortable to share their opinion in front of people who disagree that they should have an equal voice merely for being who they are.
    - azangru 7y ago

p4bl0 7y ago

I think it's Rosa Luxemburg who said "freedom is always the freedom of dissenters". I believe that's true, the problem is knowing who are the dissenters, as many political groups want that label while many of them do not deserve it at all (obvious example: Trump presenting himself as an anti-system candidate).

chrisco255 7y ago
Huh? Freedom of speech is for everyone regardless of their label.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  The quote means that freedom really exists when it applies to all, including those who disagree with the government/powerful/majority. I.e. the freedom of the dissenters is the measure of freedom in the group.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Exactly. The people in power, the dominant social group, etc, are rarely short in freedom. It's the people who don't fit in that are most at risk of losing their freedom. Of speech or otherwise.
- p4bl0 7y ago
  I think you misunderstand the quote. It says that the level of freedom in a given society is comparable to that of dissenters. Of course people who are in favor of the system and benefit from it will never be the one who are censored. But the fact that they are not censored is not a good measure of the freedom in that system.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  Right, but non-controversial speech doesn't need protecting - there's no question of freedom there. Freedom of speech means the freedom to say things that other people wish you wouldn't say. Only controversial speech needs protecting, so in a sense, controversial speech is the only kind that freedom of speech is concerned with.

fetbaffe 7y ago

This is article is nothing more than a hidden message of praise to migration, however empirically it is not true, the two most successful economies in the world from about 1870 to 1970 was Sweden & Japan, the two most homogenic countries at that time. It is very simplistic to assume that variety of opinions will lead to success, it definitely can, but it can also be a barrier. Variety of opinion must be within some parameters, too much variety can hinder progress, if your team is not even on the same page of what your are building then it will be very hard to get anything done.

AllegedAlec 7y ago
I'm always sceptical when people say that diversity of colour somehow leads to diversity of thought.
- mcv 7y ago
  Not diversity of colour by itself maybe, but diversity of culture, and diversity of experience, are rather vital if you want multiple viewpoints and experiences to be represented. But there are more viewpoints than just cultural ones; no culture is completely homogenous in opinion.
- meheleventyone 7y ago
  A concrete example would be developing facial recognition algorithms. There are now several examples of them not working with black faces. It's definitely a lack of diversity of thought to not think about whole segments of society when designing such things. At the very least diversity of physical characteristics on the development team would help remind them they exist. More usually its that physical characteristics represent lives that are inaccessible to people without them. So people with different skin color, disabilities, sex, gender and background are all reasonable proxies for diversity of thought by the fact that these people all have very different lived experiences.
jamesrcole 7y ago
> This is article is nothing more than a hidden message of praise to migration That is not true at all. From the article: the key to dealing with this problem is “cognitive diversity”. In other words, assembling a team of people with different perspectives and intellectual backgrounds. It is not just about selecting people for teams from both sexes and various ethnicities (though that, too). Hire only Cambridge politics graduates (or Harvard MBAs or Stanford software engineers) and they will have studied under the same professors and absorbed similar world views, regardless of their gender or skin colour. There are two elements to selecting a good team. First, assemble people with diverse viewpoints. ... A study of over 300 projects by the Rotterdam School of Management found that those led by junior managers were more likely to succeed than those led by senior managers—maybe because other team members were less intimidated about pointing out potential pitfalls to someone lower down the pecking order. Your characterisation of the article as "nothing more than a hidden message of praise to migration" is completely off the mark, and it makes me think your comment was driven by a strong agenda.

mcv 7y ago

I'm unable to read the article at the moment, but I certainly agree with the title. I recently had to hire 4 new developers for my team, and I found 4 I'm really happy with, but the one I'm most happy with is the one I hired primary because he was very opinionated, and now after two weeks, he's already having a major positive impact on our way of working. By contrast, the two developers with the most experience on paper are very timid, and it's hard to get a straight answer out of them. It's probably a cultural issue. Which makes it extra annoying, because in many situation, it's valuable to have opinions from all cultures represented, and not just the most direct cultures.

afarrell 7y ago
I'm curious which phrase you find is a better expression of this dev's communication: - "Strong opinions, weakly held" - "Clear opinions, openly offered"
- mcv 7y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by this. That opinionated dev comes across to me as having strong opinions, which he expresses clearly when relevant. But when I disagree, he sees my point and is willing to do it my way if I insist, which I rarely do, because he often has a good point.
- intarga 7y ago
  Those two don't appear mutually exclusive
yodsanklai 7y ago
> I'm most happy with is the one I hired primary because he was very opinionated, and now after two weeks, he's already having a major positive impact on our way of working It's also good that you are willing to listen to his advice. It sometimes hard for opinions to be heard in conservative environments. It should be the role of a good manager to make sure that everyone is encouraged to share his views, especially those who wouldn't do it naturally. Sometimes, I'm amazed that so many people simply keep their mouth shut even if they totally disagree with their management or project organization!

johnwish007 7y ago

We need a diversity of opinions for sure, people without opinions are just Yes Men.

hogFeast 7y ago

Totally misunderstands "psychological safety". The reason why people are afraid of speaking up is because of an excess of "psychological safety", not a deficit. It is because the boss needs to feel "safe". That culture comes from and is for the senior staff. It is funny because I have seen companies understand this and try to hire a diverse group. But they do everything else in a very rigid, hierarchical way. So most junior people end up leaving, and the senior people go on as before. One particular firm has been doing diverse hiring for close to three decades...their senior staff is still composed of the good old boys who have their come to Christ moment about diversity every few years but never change themselves. You really have to focus on those senior people to understand this. Everyone says they want diversity, they may even hire diverse...but when a junior person is telling them why they are wrong, they will utterly lose their shit. I do know places that have comfortably achieved diversity too. But the thinking required is basically antithetical to everything that people are taught about how to behave i.e. think things through for yourself, don't think emotionally, be prepared to be wrong and change your mind when that occurs, etc.

jackgavigan 7y ago

The practice of purging the ranks of "difficult" subordinates - people who question the wisdom of conventional thinking, who challenge their superiors, who do not automatically salute and say "yes sir, yes, sir, six bags full", when their superiors speak - over the years has produced a crop of senior officials long on form and short on substance. The long-term result of stifling dissent and discouraging unconventional views, while rewarding those who conform, is an officer corps that is sterile, stagnant, and predictable. Promoting clones, while purging mavericks, is tantamount to incest. We all know the possible long-term effect of generations of incest - feeblemindedness, debilitation, and insanity. -- Colonel James G Burton, The Pentagon Wars (1992)

celticmusic 7y ago
That quote is brutal in it's simplicity, bluntness, and distinct lack of cleverness. I love it.