Why do so many of history's greatest innovators experience catastrophic failure before achieving world-changing success? The answer lies not in the failure itself, but in what it teaches them about seeking out conflict and opposing viewpoints.
Adalo lets you build database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps — published to the App Store and Google Play — from a single no-code editor. When building your next project, understanding how visionaries like Musk, Jobs, Disney, and Ray Dalio harness disagreement can help you avoid the costly mistakes that come from overconfidence in your own perspective.
So what’s going on here? Is failure a necessary prerequisite to world-changing success? Is it just the cost of trying things no one has tried before? Should we all torpedo our current projects so we can get that experience of failure under our belts? Of course not. Luckily for you, we can learn the lesson from others’ failures without having to experience that pain quite so acutely ourselves.
What each of these innovation icons learned was that they didn’t have all the answers. They learned humility. This is a common problem. Psychologists find again and again that most people vastly overestimate what they know. Our brains, like certain social media sites, are full of fake news. And making decisions on bad information leads to bad outcomes. You lose your fortune. You lose your company.
This kind of total failure is excruciating. Most people don’t come back from it. But people like Musk and Dalio, Disney and Jobs, they got back in the arena. They did everything they could to avoid the mistakes of the past. When you’re thoroughly skeptical of the mind that got you into trouble the last time (your own), there’s only one thing you can do to reduce your risk of failure — seek out the opinions of others, particularly those that disagree with you.
Certainly Jobs and Musk have developed a reputation of delivering creativity through conflict. But encouraging different points of view doesn’t mean you have to develop a reputation for being disagreeable. In his book, Principles, Dalio calls his process of intentionally seeking out differing opinions “Thoughtful Disagreement.” There are four steps to encourage disagreement that is thoughtful and doesn’t devolve into unproductive conflict:
Find Experts
Thoughtful Disagreement starts with seeking out people with different opinions from yours and different opinions from one another. But rather than random people off the street, the key is to find believable people — people whose opinions you think have value in the subject at hand. Gathering these diverse viewpoints is sort of like buying a mutual fund instead of just one company’s stock. Diversifying your points of view, just like diversifying your portfolio, mitigates your risk of failure without much downside.
Have a Conversation
The next step is to gather these experts together. Sure, you would get some value but soliciting each expert’s thoughts individually, but you’ll get far more if you can get them to talk to one another.
Set Ground Rules
So you’ve got a bunch of experts in a room disagreeing with one another. This could go poorly. Instead of letting the conversation devolve into a shouting match, it’s important to set ground rules at the start of the conversation:
- Start by reaffirming the reason you are all here. Everyone should want what's best for you or your team.
- Choose a format that gives everyone equal opportunity to share their opinions.
- Appoint a moderator. This could be you or another non-expert 3rd party who can make sure that everyone is understanding all of the points raised in the conversation and is given a chance to respond.
Decide
Now comes the hard part — deciding. Making decisions is one of the most mentally taxing activities the human brain engages in, so it’s no surprise that we do everything we can to try to avoid decisions. One of the most insidious ways our brains try to avoid the work of decision making is “deciding” by voting. In a work setting, decision by voting is often used as a way for those in power to avoid both the decision as well as any responsibility for its consequences — pretty tricky. And voting can lead to some pretty bad outcomes. Everyone may have been created equal, but the expertise they’ve developed over their lifetimes are not.
- Instead of voting, start by defining the principles by which you want to make your decision. What are the values you’re trying to maximize?
- Second, give more weight to the opinions you find more credible. Give everyone the ability to score each other on different areas of expertise based on past performance. Another tip from Dalio: Credible people are ones who have been successful and can tell you why.
- Finally, make the decision. Explain your reasoning to the group you’ve gathered, but take personal responsibility for the decision.
Gaining humility has been the transformational moment for so many successful innovators. Most learned humility the hard way — through incredible failure. But they came out on the other side with a superpower — the ability to make better decisions than pretty much everyone else. If you could make better decisions than everyone else, would you be successful? Of course! Fortunately, you don’t have to fail hard to become a decision-making superhero. You just have to learn the art of thoughtful disagreement, to fight like a champion.
FAQ
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can I easily build an app that incorporates thoughtful disagreement and team collaboration features? | Yes, with Adalo's No Code App Builder, you can easily create apps that facilitate team collaboration, expert feedback gathering, and structured decision-making processes. You can build features like voting systems, discussion forums, expert rating mechanisms, and moderated conversation tools—all without writing a single line of code. |
| Why choose Adalo over other App Builder solutions? | Adalo is a no-code app builder for database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps—one version across all three platforms. AI-assisted building and streamlined publishing enable launch to the Apple App Store and Google Play in days rather than months. This ability to publish directly to app stores is crucial because marketing and distribution are often the hardest parts of launching a new app or business—having your app available where users already search for solutions gives you a major competitive advantage. |
| What's the fastest way to build and publish a decision-making or team collaboration app to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store? | Adalo is the fastest way to build and publish a decision-making or team collaboration app to the Apple App Store and Google Play. With No Code App Builder's drag-and-drop interface and AI-assisted building, you can go from idea to published app in days rather than months. Adalo handles the complex App Store submission process, so you can focus on your app's features and user experience instead of wrestling with certificates, provisioning profiles, and store guidelines. |
| What is Thoughtful Disagreement and how can it improve my decision-making? | Thoughtful Disagreement is a process popularized by Ray Dalio that involves intentionally seeking out differing opinions from credible experts to make better decisions. The four steps include finding experts with diverse viewpoints, having conversations where they can discuss with one another, setting ground rules to prevent unproductive conflict, and then making a weighted decision based on credibility rather than simple voting. |
| Why is humility important for successful innovation? | Humility is crucial because it helps innovators recognize they don't have all the answers. Psychologists find that most people vastly overestimate what they know, and making decisions on bad information leads to bad outcomes. Successful innovators like Musk, Dalio, Disney, and Jobs learned through failure to be skeptical of their own minds and actively seek out opinions from others who disagree with them. |
| How should I make decisions after gathering expert opinions? | Instead of voting, which can lead to poor outcomes and diffused responsibility, you should define the principles and values you want to maximize, give more weight to opinions from credible people who have been successful and can explain why, and then make the final decision yourself while taking personal responsibility. This approach leads to better outcomes than treating all opinions equally. |
| Do I need to experience failure to become a successful decision-maker? | No, you don't have to fail hard to become a decision-making superhero. While many successful innovators learned humility through incredible failure, you can learn from their experiences instead. By mastering the art of thoughtful disagreement—gathering diverse expert opinions and weighing them carefully—you can develop the same superpower of making better decisions than most people. |
