Human Capital Briefs

Amazon Is Right That Disagreement Results in Better Decisions

September 11, 2015

When I worked in the federal government, I was amazed at the large numbers of factual errors in widely-read stories, even in the best newspapers. As a colleague of mine, a staunch Democrat, observed in 2009, “I now think that at least half of the things I most disliked about the Bush Administration . . . never happened.”

I tell this little tale because the lengthy New York Times story, detailing some apparently brutal features of the culture at Amazon, should be taken with many grains of salt. But even if the story is full of inaccuracies, and if we put the company’s alleged harshness to one side, Amazon’s approach offers indispensable guidance for companies both large and small when they are deciding how to make group decisions.

The story suggests Amazon places immense importance on defining team players not as people who go along with the group’s consensus, or who support the status quo, but instead as those who add new ideas and perspectives. The company evidently prizes those who overturn workplace convention, as signaled by the term used on the award given to high-performing employees: “I’m Peculiar.” To be “peculiar” is to break with convention, in the sense of generating fresh perspectives and (potentially) significant reforms.

In short, Amazon discourages conformity and combats groupthink. Bosses do not just give feedback; they receive it. Disruptive thinking is welcome. Conflict and innovation are thought to march hand-in-hand. One of the company’s core principles advises employees to “disagree and commit.” The theory is that “harmony is often overvalued in the workplace” and “that it can stifle honest critique and encourage polite praise for flawed ideas.” Low-level employees are strongly encouraged to make major contributions. In discussions, high status is not believed to be a guarantor of correctness.

In emphasizing that harmony is often overrated, and in valuing disagreement and internal scrutiny, Amazon is acting consistently with the principal findings of decades of research in behavioral science. That research has shown that many groups, including businesses, do poorly, or at least less well than they should, because they do not take advantage of the information and the creativity of their own staffs. Led by confident (but closed-minded) leaders, they establish policies and practices and then they execute – but without sufficient internal scrutiny, either before the fact or on a continuing basis.

Of course Amazon has the advantage of an extraordinary amount of data, allowing it to explore, on the basis of evidence, what works and what doesn’t. But by itself, data can be inarticulate. It needs human beings to make sense of it, or at the very least to try to figure out what sense it makes. Amazon puts a premium on sense-making. To the extent that a company takes self-conscious steps to elicit creativity and honest critique from its own people, it is likely to avoid groupthink and to do far better than it otherwise would – and to make more effective decisions than companies that overvalue harmony and do not focus explicitly on how to produce informed judgments.

This particular story, however, has an apparent dark side, which is garnering most of the media attention. According to the article in the Times, Amazon’s excellent practices, counteracting consensus and complacency, are accompanied by a culture that is not merely ultra-competitive but also unforgiving, harsh, and sometimes even cruel. Whether or not that’s so, it’s crucial to see that good companies can encourage internal disagreement, and reject the supposed virtue of harmony, while also treating their employees with courtesy.

Wise companies can do both well and good. They do well because they take full advantage of the ideas and imagination of those who work for them. They do good because they never embarrass or humiliate their own people. Recognition of the dignity of each and every employee underlies the belief that harmony is greatly overrated – and also the belief that each and every employee should always be treated with respect.

 

This blog first appeared on Harvard Business Review on 08/18/2015.

View our complete listing of Talent Management and Strategic HR blogs.