We have often read “Need is the mother of invention”, years ago I heard from a mentor “Demand is the father of imitation and innovation is the other woman”. My contribution to these axioms is that, Disagreement is the mother of ideation!
Recently during a conversation I mentioned to a couple colleagues I do not enjoyed working with people who cannot handle disagreement. I came from a culture where disagreement is often construed as disrespect. People often feel violated and resort to guilt tripping. Just imagine running a business where the top guy is either heavy handed or leveraging guilt to get his or her point, it would be a pretty difficult place to survive.
I have always believed anytime an individual confuses disagreement for disrespect, it short circuits the intellectual process. It takes a lot of self confidence to be able to accept and handle multiple points of view with ease and comfort. As a strategist one needs to be able to accept as many points of view as the number of people in a room. Anytime this requirement fails, it is obvious to me the organization has the wrong set of people or a poorly crafted reward system.
Since I believe Disagreement is the mother of ideation, the mercurial the staff the better the pipeline of ideas. It all starts at the widest end of the hopper until it converges based on style, structure, systems, staff, values skills and strategy (the McKinsey 7S model) into a single directed stream line of action!
