Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - The Power of Disagreement

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

When everyone is in agreement on a project or idea, is there a hidden downside? Jonah Sachs, entrepreneur and author of the book Unsafe Thinking: How to Be Nimble and Bold When You Need it Most, reveals that finding constructive ways to disagree can be a key to unlocking creativity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Jonah Sachs is an entrepreneur and author. His most recent book is Unsafe Thinking, How to Be Nimble and Bold When You Need It Most. In it, Sachs explains how everyone getting along can be good for the general mood in the office, but it can also be a buzzkill for creativity. Fortunately, as Sachs says, there are ways around that. Agreeableness has been found to be one of the highest predictors of non-creativity. So they've done studies of teachers, for instance, And they ask them, how important is it to teach creativity to your students?

And they'll say, it's the number one most important thing we can do. And then they'll say, who's your favorite student? And they will always identify a non-creative student as their favorite. Because creative people tend to be less agreeable. And so when there's a subtle culture of agreeableness being important, creativity starts to shrink. And so I talk about lots of different ways to what I call gamify dissent, to force people to fight it out really hard, kind of like Steve Kerr has them in the arena, and then come back into a safe environment outside of the brainstorming or meeting session. Things like red

teams where you put an idea out there and it's the job of some of your colleagues to rip it apart in every way possible without ripping you apart is a great practice, for instance, for being honest with each other and killing ideas before they get out into the market and we learn the hard lesson that way. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Thank you.