“Disagree and commit.”
According to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and CEO, this simple phrase is key to organizational efficiency.
In his 2016 letter to shareholders, Bezos cited the disagree-and-commit strategy as a way to stave off what he calls “Day 2.” Bezos constantly reminds his staff members that it’s still Day 1 for them, meaning they should never get complacent with their success. According to Bezos, Day 2 symbolizes stasis — and eventual death.
Day 1 companies make high-quality decisions quickly, Bezos said in the letter. That’s where disagreeing and committing comes in. He wrote:
“If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, ‘Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?’ By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.”
This approach appears to trace back to Andy Grove, the Intel cofounder and former CEO who died in 2016. According to Grove’s biographer, the Harvard Business School professor Richard S. Tedlow, one component of Intel culture urged staff to “get as many ideas as you can — but once you do, come to a decision and create what Andy the engineer calls a strategy vector.”
As Business Insider’s Julie Bort reported, disagreeing and committing is used to help decide which new Amazon products to pursue, like Alexa and Echo. It’s part of a broader Amazon leadership principle called “have backbone”: Everyone working on a new product is obligated to share their opinion.
Amazon’s website describes the principle this way:
“Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.”
In the 2016 letter, Bezos shared an anecdote about disagreeing and committing: When he wasn’t convinced that a certain Amazon Studios original was worth it but his team was all for it, he told the team, “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.”
This article first appeared on www.businessinsider.com
Follow us here and subscribe here for all the latest news on how you can keep Thriving.
Stay up to date or catch-up on all our podcasts with Arianna Huffington here.