Put it out there....and they will come?

I have often been told that I am extreme. Throughout my life people have attempted to moderate me. For the last few years I have fought an internal battle, feeling that I had a voice which needed to be heard against learning to "moderate" myself in order to reach the goals of others. I think this affected many around me, negatively, as I was in constant turmoil; wanting to scream out that the emperor was naked, only being subjugated by the fear of reprisal from my colleagues. What is the message here? We need more loud voices in disagreement. We need healthy debate in our corporations to arrive at the best decisions. We need to test our ideas against those of others to prove / disprove their worthiness.

How many times have you heard the saying "two heads are better than one"? Well, do we think that is because of consensus? It's not. Two heads are better than one for the same reason that GPS works better than Loran-C. The more input we have from different perspective, the more able we are to arrive at the "truth" of our situation, which will lead to better solutions. Too many times have I seen "two heads are better than one" become a power-play, rather than a debate.

And, what about consensus? So much time is spent on meetings to drive consensus. Is that really the right way to lead? Well, I suppose it is the right way to manage; but, not the right way to lead. We spend a lot of time coddling. I don't mean to be harsh here, but we need to return to a philosophy of personal accountability, individual differentiation, and independant thought. We should surround ourselves with those of a different perspective, who will argue with us, so that we have the opportunity to test our ideas. We should pursue the ideas that are "right" because they have been tested, and we believe in their success, not the ones that are agreed upon under force of politic.

There is a lot to be written on this subject, and I haven't done it a great deal of justice here, but I intend to in the future, so keep reading.