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Saved by 8 people (-3 private), first by anonymouse user on 2007-04-17


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The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong.

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Death by homogeny

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If the group, as a collective, is only capable of approving B level work, it doesn’t matter how many A level ideas you bring to it.

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Focus groups or other outside sources of information can not give a team, or its leaders, a soul

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A bland homogeneous team of people has no real opinions,

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same backgrounds, outlooks, and experiences who will only feel comfortable discussing the safe idea

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Find people with different experiences, opinions, backgrounds, weights, heights, races, facial hair styles, colors, past-times, favorite items of clothing, philosophies, and beliefs

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Unify them around the results you want, not the means or approaches they are expected to use

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If you go out of your way to find diverse experiences it will become impossible for you to miss ideas simply because your homogenous outlook filtered them out.

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which level is the right one at a given time.

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People worry about the wrong thing at the wrong time and apply their intelligence in ways that doesn’t serve the greater good of whatever they’re trying to achieve.

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The primary point is that no amount of intelligence can help an individual who is diligently working at the wrong level of the problem

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that short term bits of data are neither reliable nor a wise way to go about making important long term decisions

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They’ll jump between assumptions quickly, throwing out jargon, bits of logic, or rules of thumb at a rate of fire fast enough to cause most people to become rattled, and give in.

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nothing is obvious

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what problem are we trying to solve? What alternatives to solving it are there? What are the tradeoffs in each alternative?

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