Item 15: Treat Debate as a Learning Experience

Problem solving is hard. Problem-solving at the level of something like Fortune 500 enterprise software, or an app that scales to billions of users, or the next billion dollar company, or clean tech that will revolutionize climate change,or that Squarespace site for the hyper-particular (yet very wealthy) client, is painstaikingly difficult. It often takes many people (ideally with diverse life experiences) working together, in unison, towards a shared goal of solving it. That means that the group of people must develop a shared understanding of the problem, agree on a solution for it, scope out the work, and delegate and execute it. In the process of doing so, there will almost always be debate. Unfortunately, I've seen many circumstances where people have made the mistake of thinking that the "debate" is the time where one person proves their correctness over another. This is a misinterpretation.

The purposes of a debate is not to determine who is right and who is wrong, but to develop a more accurate understanding of the topic. Problem solving is an art form, and art is subjective; there is no "right" or "wrong". There is only the views of everyone on how to undertake the problem, and the perspectives, wisdom, and experience they can add.

[CITATION NEEDED] Unfortunately, the science behind this is Tribalism. If you're not with me, you're against me. Debates bring this out in human beings. And since we have egos (and performance reviews), it tends to trigger that "fight or flight" fear response that asserts that "I MUST NOT BE WRONG".

It takes some getting used to, but I've found that once I stopped caring whether or not I was wrong, and started caring about whether or not we were building the right thing, conversations became way more effective. Specifically, I started doing this thing where if I thought someone was wrong, I assumed I didn't understand their perspective vs. assume they were incorrect. I would then ask them clarifying questions to put myself in their shoes, and from there try and recreate their opinion. I would then reflect on what I had learned through doing this exercise. I learned this from one of the best managers I've ever had; he called it a "hero story", and it is an extremely effective way to keep the conversation focused on successful outcomes vs. individual egos.

Don't let the product suffer because you believe you have to be right.