

Strong Opinions, Weakly Held - brettcvz
http://blog.filepicker.io/post/50433907379/strong-opinions-weakly-held

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wwweston
"if you don’t express your opinion strongly, it may not stick in the
listener’s head as well as an overall weaker idea that someone else expresses
with more zeal."

OK, sure. Connecting confidence with correctness is one natural human
heuristic for assessing an idea or proposal.

But it's also an unreliable one, and encouraging everybody to assume it when
delivering ideas seems as likely to magnify the problems as it is to put
everybody on an equal playing field.

If you're trying to cultivate a culture where consensus decisions are better
decisions, I think what you really want is less _opinions_ that are _strong_
than _positions_ that are _clearly reasoned and articulated_.

I suppose it's possible that the author of this piece (and those who coined
and use the phrase on which it's based) really mean that, but I think the
"strong opinions" phrasing is easy to confuse with general brash confidence.

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brisket
Great mentality, especially considering how bad stubbornness can be personally
and professionally. Might want to reconsider the second part. "Weakly held"
suggests that you just rollover when there's an idea that might be better.
It's more beneficial to have an objective, possibly heated discussion that
leads to the right decision without any ill will. My approach is to have
'defendable opinions.' If you have more legitimate reasons for your thought,
more often than not it's the right way to go.

Props on working it into your company culture

