Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

Bob Sutton, who was an inspiration around the time we started Socialtext, is becoming one of my favorite bloggers.  I've been sharing his posts like The Snowstorm Study in my internal blog and talking too much about the No Asshole Rule.  But Strong Opinions, Weakly Held is an absolute gem:

...Perhaps the best description I’ve ever seen of how wise people act comes from the amazing folks at Palo Alto’s Institute for the Future. A couple years ago, I was talking the Institute’s Bob Johansen about wisdom, and he explained that – to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward – they advise people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held.”  Bob explained that weak opinions are problematic because people aren’t inspired to develop the best arguments possible for them, or to put forth the energy required to test them. Bob explained that it was just as important, however, to not be too attached to what you believe because, otherwise, it undermines your ability to “see” and “hear” evidence that clashes with your opinions. This is what psychologists sometimes call the problem of “confirmation bias.”

Not only is this great advice for interpersonal communications in an organization, it might be a guiding principle for blogging.

I wonder if the title is a hat tip to Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, where the pieces are people and the conversations ebb and flow their ties.

Comments

[Diego Rodriguez]

Bob will be speaking about "The No Asshole Rule" this coming Thursday July 20, as part of the IDEO Know How series.

I've had the pleasure of reading early parts of the book and it's going to be good. Especially if you've ever had to work with, for, or against an asshole.

[Don Park]

Yup. That's basically what I've been practicing for the past 20 years although, being a visual guy, I've used the image of a fortress floating in the sky instead of words which require too much chewing.

[Gary Bourgeault (managersrealm.com)]

I like within the quote you posted that it mentions about attachment.

Attachment means that your emotions can potentially rule you, and as a result, rule out what may contradict or help you to see that which can give you a breakthrough.

We do need to hold what we have strongly, while we look for those things (openly) that bring us to the next level.

[David Weinberger]

I doubt the formulation has anything to do with my book, but I really like the advice.

My only concern is that it seems to be easier for a particular type of personality to hold strong opinions weakly, which just happens to be the pundit/industry analyst personality type. So, while it seems like one good approach, I wonder if there isn't some pundit bias in suggesting that it is the best approach...

[Jens-Olaf]

Did I read too much strong opinion posts throughout the German blogosphere? Switching to the English language side of the web it makes me feel like beeing free: in discussion, in perspective. This is the impression I've got recently.

[Don Park]

My theory is that human perception and behavior is bound strongly by social context, particularly by language and culture. So it makes sense that you would act and feel different depending on the language you are using.