I think the reason this isn't done more often is that most decisions making is political in nature. Explicitly stating downsides provides opponents of "the plan" a greater opportunity to continue arguing for their side in bad-faith.
Presenting only the upside gives enough context to helps the team execute the plan.
Another aspect is management trying to hide the distasteful aspects of decision making (e.g. choosing an "inferior" technology because it requires the company to invest more in training its staff)
I wish this wasn't the case and I dream of being part of an org where upsides/downsides are always explicitly stated but I am yet to find one (outside of very small teams within larger orgs) where complex politics doesn't have an oversized influence on decision making.
I see too often companies giving individual bonuses on productivity, that creates a "if you fail I win" mentality. Punishing people for mistakes is also quite common. You end with colleagues that can't trust anybody, everything is a competition against the guy sitting at your side.
Punishment and reward systems make "office politics" toxic and a game for opportunists instead of a forum to get to the best decisions.
Experiencing this in a FAANG microcosm is what made me realize the same thing of the economy as a whole. When government (Latin for “control of the mind”) controls the incentives it never has to get its hands dirty accomplishing its goals. The economic reward means someone else will inevitably do it for them, even when that reward is something that’s literally worthless[0] except as an idea which much be mutually agreed upon. The very existence of billionaires is the exact same kind of individual bonus, but on a global scale.
[0] RE: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages... “Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything. This has been the case since 1933. The notes have no value for themselves, but for what they will buy. In another sense, because they are legal tender, Federal Reserve notes are "backed" by all the goods and services in the economy.”
Money is not "literally worthless"; the state guarantees that you can use them to pay your debts, by cancelling all debts that you pay using dollars, whether your creditor agrees to it or not.
If you don't present the downside, you are betting your career that your coworkers don't know the downside or aren't willing to present it in order to take you down. There is a great story about this in In The Plex book, about an exec who sabotaged another by encouraging him to propose a project and then embarrassing him in the meeting with the founders.
Within companies, this seems inherently challenging because most employees of companies aren't privy to enough information to enumerate the case against, and also it's (theoretically) a collectivist decision.
For example - in one's personal life, one can choose to learn woodworking. We'll ignore the case for for the sake of brevity.
The case against is primarily made of opportunity cost, both of time and money. What could I have done with that time instead of woodworking? What could I have bought?
It's all about your own choice. You know a lot about these things, and you're able to use that information to approach the best course of action.
But if you're an employee of a company that sort of thing is either impossible due to a lack of information, or might just run counter to the company's aims.
You might say "instead of doing this 6 month software project, we should just fire the developers and take a punt on the S&P500 with the savings".
Or "we should focus on other project A". But "other project A" might mean that you end up on a shrinking team and eventually get fired, so you're not going to suggest that.
Or maybe there's some internal project you don't even know exists that could do with some more dev time and would be more profitable. You probably don't even know that exists, though.
Just putting forward a case for something or case against something misses out a lot. Don't get me wrong, it can be used as a provocation to stimulate discussion. But that is only part of the benefit.
If one were to use an approach like Six Thinking Hats, one could use a hat sequence such as 1.Blue -> 2.White -> 3.Green -> 4.Yellow -> 5.Black -> 6.Green -> 7.Red -> 8.Blue. Each colored hat represents a specific thinking mode. We assign a predetermined time for each stage and use the thinking mode exclusively related to the hat color.
1.Blue: Establish a focus (for eg: building an app that does X)
2.White: What information do we have (for eg: addressable market size, MVP scope, any research/data available on prospective customers etc.,)
3.Green: The creative details (for eg: We will do Y1, Y2, Y3, ...)
4.Yellow: List the benefits
5.Black: List the drawbacks, pitfalls, challenges, risks etc.,
6.Green: Address the drawbacks, pitfalls and challenges creatively and try to mitigate risks
7.Red: Get a gut check from the team if the proposed idea/solution is trending in the right direction
8.Blue: Setup a follow-up action plan (for eg: Next steps on xx/xx/xxxx, task owner ABC).
The article's main point on putting forward the case against is only the #5.Black hat thinking. We are all natural black hat thinkers. But that is just one of the modes and focusing on that alone doesn't lead to a robust solution.
Arguing against certainly takes more work. Do you feel that, if someone did the arguing against, as suggested in the article and presented the steel man argument against a proposal, and then refuted the arguement against, that their work and effort would be dismissed? Or worse, might others might think less of the proposal?
My preliminary feelings are that it would still be appreciated and recognized, just not perhaps proportionally to the effort.
Presenting only the upside gives enough context to helps the team execute the plan.
Another aspect is management trying to hide the distasteful aspects of decision making (e.g. choosing an "inferior" technology because it requires the company to invest more in training its staff)
I wish this wasn't the case and I dream of being part of an org where upsides/downsides are always explicitly stated but I am yet to find one (outside of very small teams within larger orgs) where complex politics doesn't have an oversized influence on decision making.