The Art of Disagree and Commit
Lead your team to spectacular execution when you are given an unpopular task
Of all the mundane problems plaguing middle managers, I didn’t think it would be the disagree and commit principle that would get me in trouble the most.
After all, I had no issue conceptualising companies as hierarchical organisations. There is a top-down pyramid, and the folks above tell the folks below what to do. We are cognizant of this fact when we interview for the job. It makes sense that there needs to be a continuity, otherwise nothing of significance can be achieved at scale. We would want our own ‘orders’ to be followed, wouldn’t we?
Further, I have no illusions about any high character or quality of my bosses. As in, I thought everyone, including myself and the execs, are random people with arbitrary biases. Someone being higher up only means they somehow interviewed and got the gig, like everyone else at other levels.
I like this way of thinking because it frees me from the mental confines of oh, my boss must know better—nope, they are just a random person making a biased decision on a subject they may or may not fully grasp.
But it’s OK, because that’s life for you.
Anyway, it has been difficult for me (and apparently to others) to implement disagree and commit. In hindsight, I tried several variations of disagree but commit, which worked somewhat well in the short-term (esp. with my team/department), but had negative long-term consequences: it eroded my team’s trust in the senior leadership, making it difficult for me to sell them the company vision/strategy.
Below, I present you a treatise my blabbering on the art of disagree and commit.
The Concept of Disagree and Commit
The concept of disagree and commit as a management principle is attributed to Scott McNealy (Sun Microsystems) and Andy Grove (Intel), with Jeff Bezos (Amazon) popularising it in his 2016 letter to stakeholders. Let’s look at some of the direct and indirect quotes to dig deeper into the what.
Agree and commit, disagree and commit, or get out of the way.
The maxim commonly attributed to McNealy focuses on taking action; agree to the plan regardless of how you feel about it, or remove yourself from the equation.
At Intel, Grove demanded not only that his people argue well, but also that they leave those argument-rich meetings fully committed to the decisions that had been made. His famous axiom "disagree and commit" captures an essential truth: Failure to capitalize on a new idea often has far less to do with the quality of the idea than with the indecision and waffling that accompany it.1
The management style Grove fostered at Intel is known for many things, with one of their hallmarks being their speed of execution. Again, it is about doing something rather than waiting for a potentially elusive consensus.
Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.
I think the most interesting part of what Bezos has to say comes next—emphasis mine:
This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.
Note what this example is not: it’s not me thinking to myself “well, these guys are wrong and missing the point, but this isn’t worth me chasing.” It’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, a chance for the team to weigh my view, and a quick, sincere commitment to go their way.
Bezos starts with the less interesting (IMO) scenario where you tell a line report that they should disagree and commit—things are always easier when the power asymmetry is in your favour.
But the next part is illuminating: “[I disagree and commit] and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” YES. I don’t necessarily feel comfortable praising his leadership, but this is one truly unadulterated alignment-achieving statement if I’ve ever seen one. Don’t you wish your boss disagrees with you like that?
The unifying theme in all three approaches is a bias for action. One can see the strong resemblance to other well-know axioms on decision-making and task execution, such as
The best decision is the right decision. The next best decision is the wrong decision. The worst decision is no decision.
widely attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, and
It’s better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.
by Grace Hopper.
Note that Admiral Hopper’s advice is for getting stuff done at highly bureaucratically-complex organisations (i.e. military); when you believe something is the right course of action, it is better to just do it than to seek approval first, if you are optimising for helping those in need. If applied outside this framing—which is how she contextualised it—it can be seriously problematic.
In sum, the axioms address the following:
Avoiding the consensus trap, leading to inaction and missed opportunities, deadlines, and time windows.
Achieving alignment in cases where it’s not a fundamental issue of principles or values—those won’t be fixed by simply nodding and moving on.
Offering a viable conflict resolution process—it is better to disagree earlier in a process than later.
However, there are also potential drawbacks.
First, psychologically, it gets exponentially harder to disagree as you go up in linear hierarchy. I don’t identify this myself much—perhaps I’m in denial—but I observe this a lot around me. Instead of oh, it’s my manager’s boss, it is OH IT IS MY MANAGER’S BOSS. Relax, they are probably feeling the impostor syndrome as hard as you are.
Second, it is a potential cause of dissonance having to agree to things that you disagree with. Again, this depends on a multitude of variables—how you relate to your job, your values, even your upbringing—but for the average case, doing it more and more is likely to correlate with reduced trust in your manager/company—why do you frequently see things differently?
Now we can reverse-engineer the optimal scenario for disagree and commit based on the above.
First things first, you need to identify whether this is a sustainable strategy for you. If you have to disagree and commit multiple times before lunch, that’s a strong signal of foundational misalignment between you and your boss/company. In such cases, frankly you should quit and go to an organisation that matches better with your values ASAP.
Next, you need to understand your own position and that of your boss. Sometimes, your manager possesses the bigger picture context that you simply cannot have at your pay grade. Although they don’t have to, you should ask your boss to provide you with some context as to why they are giving you the noted treatment. This will greatly aid your ability to rally your team to execute the unpopular task.
On your end, do you know what truly underlies your disagreement? “It’s a stupid idea!” is not a valid reason; it is neither actionable nor quantifiable. Stupid how?
It sets back [time frame] of work
It will lead to employee attrition
It will lead to customer churn etc.
If you are unable to identify a business reason to contest the proposal, it’s probably your ego. And that’s not good enough. It is a privilege of the exec to make decisions (remember—random people making arbitrary decisions, just like you). Then, you are essentially upset that you don’t get to make decisions, while voluntarily taking part in a system where you are not the ultimate decision-maker 🤷🏻♂️
Breaking the News to Your Team
How you handle the communication to your team as a manager is equally crucial. This is where I have previously failed, as mundane as the task sounds.
You might be tempted to tell your team that the boss made a decision you don’t agree with, but they need to carry it out because. This makes sense initially, because
It lets you off the hook—see, it’s my boss who is unreasonable, I’m just following orders, cog in a machine
It can increase in-group cohesion—you and your team against the execs; everyone loves a David & Goliath story when they are the underdogs.
Read about in-group and out-group dynamics in my previous post below👇
This, however, does not constitute good leadership on your part:
It lets the team off the hook—when you are visibly and/or verbally noncommittal, your team will perceive this as a green light to wing the execution.
It will increase out-group exclusion—it’s your poor team against the evil? stupid? ignorant? execs, which leads to your team to feel victimised2.
It will erode your team’s trust in senior leadership—the execs clearly don’t know what they are doing, why should your team buy in the company vision/strategy with these peeps in charge?
It is your job as a middle manager to navigate disagree and commit situations with effectiveness and grace. You should start with acknowledging the displeasure felt by your team. However, don’t let this be a staging point that sets off a victim narrative. Instead, empower them to crush the task at hand:
Communicate that you disagreed, succinctly, once → Be transparent, but don’t turn it into a debilitating narrative:
I pushed back and made a counter-case, but we agreed to proceed with the original proposal in the end.
Explicitly convey that the team is now tasked with the execution of the accepted proposal → Ensure that your team understands now it’s their responsibility to get it done:
They know that we disagree with the plan. But now that I said we will do it, we are accountable for it. You might have misgivings about the task, but I say we do the best job we can, so that our disagreement can never be used against us in the future [in case the initiative fails].
Appeal and emphasise professionalism and agency → Counter the victim narrative:
Things like this happen everywhere. I understand you might have internal resistance. But see this as an opportunity to reveal your professionalism—we are all paid employees and this is our task. We have done great work in projects that we believed in. All of you have it in yourselves to channel the same effort and focus once again. I say we make this project our crowning achievement (yet) and take our due credit when it’s done.
Dispel any notion that we want to be right → Schadenfreude is not the end goal:
We want to and will crush this. We are not angling for a ‘we told you so’ in six months time. It could turn out that in hindsight, this decision didn’t lead to the desired outcome. But that is neither our concern nor our goal. Our job is to get it done, according to our high standards.
Getting disagree and commit right takes time—and perhaps a couple of failures. However, learning to deal with it when such situations arise is paramount for a middle manager.
Inspired by this week’s subject matter, I will write about the Banality of Execs™️ in the next issue of TeamCraft. Catch you soon.
Why Great Leadership Fuels Innovation by Patrick Lencioni
How Not to Disagree by Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth