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An obligation to dissent
It was an obligation, a stronger word than a right. People paint consultants with a broad brush, and plenty of the knocks about PowerPoint are fair, but thousands of people work at these firms, and this part of the culture was valuable.
The effect was a habit of trying to get to the right answer without worrying where you sit in the organization. A junior person doesn't have to act like a junior and can speak up.
That lesson came from a company he worked at 20 years ago, and it has been impactful ever since. KKR's founders valued the same trait: they liked people who had ideas and the willingness to speak up.
Why would good teams report more mistakes?
Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School coined the term psychological safety in a 1999 paper, defining it as a shared belief that speaking up carries no punishment. Her early research on hospital nursing teams found that the best teams reported more errors, because members felt safe admitting them. Google's Project Aristotle, a study of its own teams, later ranked psychological safety first among the factors behind effective teams.
How did airlines teach juniors to challenge captains?
After the 1977 collision of two 747s at Tenerife, the deadliest accident in aviation history, investigators pointed to communication breakdowns in the cockpit. NASA held a workshop in 1979 on resource management on the flight deck, and airlines began crew resource management training, which teaches junior crew members to state concerns plainly. United Airlines ran an early program starting in 1981.
Did the Catholic Church once assign a dissenter?
For centuries the Church's process for declaring saints included an official called the promoter of the faith, popularly the devil's advocate, whose job was to argue against the candidate. Pope John Paul II changed the process in 1983, ending the role. The title entered everyday English to mean anyone who argues a view they may not hold, in order to test it.
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