Management Kamran on 05 Oct 2007 06:31 am
The Cost of Suppressing Dissent for Business
Holding one’s tongue and not raising any objections is an organizational behavior entrenched in the minds of many business managers.
Avoiding the risk of being ridiculed while eliminating the possibility of upsetting the higher management is usually a good way to get promoted.
Unfortunately, it’s also a way to let the ship of business sail full steam towards the kind of rocks and icebergs that can be prevented with a little honest and healthy dissent, as noted in a recent Harvard Business School article.
Here is a short list of the disasters that could’ve been avoided had the upper-management encouraged and paid heed to dissent, according to the above mentioned article:
The 1961 Bay of Bigs fiasco, the death of two top-notch climbers to the summit of Mt. Everest in 1996, NASA’s Columbia shuttle disaster of 2003, Coca-Cola’s “New Coke” debacle, Detroit’s failure to detect the changing consumer sentiment for smaller and more efficient cars, etc.
So how can a business make sure that such dissent originate from the rank-and-file and make a difference at the highest levels of the decision-making pyramid?
Here are some suggestions:
The tolerance for dissent must start from the top. The leadership must insist that “the managers present each situation in objective terms, rather than with a positive spin.”
Those mavericks who dissent and raise points missed by the upper management must be acknowledged and at times promoted.
The organization must be able to entertain paradoxical ideas; learn to live both in the past and the future; must both exploit and explore, centralize and decentralize at the same time… which is “a relatively rare accomplishment.”