If you read Work Matters, or my books or articles, you know that I believe that one of hallmarks of constructive team dynamics are healthy and respectful arguments over ideas. And I believe it is a hallmark of skilled bosses, especially when it comes to sparking creativity. For example, I have written about the importance of having strong opinions that are weakly held and fast fights at the d.school. I continue to dig into this issue in Good Boss, Bad Boss, which has a section in the chapter on what wise leaders do called "Fight Right." It discusses Karl Weick's lovely advice to "fight as if you are right and listen as if you are wrong," and offers ten guidelines for "How to Lead a Good Fight."
As a preview, and as point 7 on the list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe that I am rolling out at HBR, I have new post at HBR called "It's Up to You to Start a Good Fight," which includes some guidelines for leading a good fight. It also includes this section about one of the heroes of the computer revolution, Bob Taylor:
I suspect that a lot more of you have heard of Brad Bird than Bob Taylor —
but Taylor probably has had a bigger influence on your life. The
researchers he funded and guided in the 1960s developed, among other
things, ARPANET, the forerunner to the Internet. In Dealers of Lightning,
author Michael Hiltzik depicts how Taylor conducted meetings among the
super-smart people whose research his group at the U.S. Defense
Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) funded:
"The daily discussions unfolded in a pattern that remained
peculiar to Taylor's management style throughout his career. Each
participant got an hour or so to describe his work. Then he would be
thrown to the mercy of the assembled court like a flank steak to pack of
ravenous wolves. "I got them to argue with each other," Taylor recalled
with unashamed glee….. "These were people who cared about their
work…. If there were technical weak spots, they would almost always
surface under these conditions. It was very, very healthy."
Taylor continued the same pattern later as assistant lab manager at
Xerox PARC, where during a rather magical and now mythical period of the
computer revolution, researchers developed many of the technologies we
use everyday including WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) word
processing, hypertext, laser printing, Ethernet and TCP/IP, to name just
a few. At PARC, Taylor organized a weekly meeting where a different
speaker each week (called "the dealer") would propose an idea and try to
defend against questions and criticisms raised by some of the most
critical, motivated, and brilliant engineers and researchers on the
planet at the time. As Hiltzik explained:
"[I]t was not to be personal. Impugning a man's thinking was
acceptable, but never his character. Taylor strived to create a
democracy where everyone's ideas were impartially subject to the group's
learned demolition, regardless of the proponent's credentials or rank."
I love that phrase, " Impugning a man's thinking was
acceptable, but never his character." I also believe that one of the most important things we can do when teaching people to do creative work is to teach them to participate and lead good fights.
I wonder, have you had — or do you know about — other bosses who are especially skilled at leading a good fight? What else do they — or you — do to make this happen?