A Different View
Why have different viewpoints if you don't allow them?
According to David Bohm, who writes extensively on the conditions that produce effective dialogue, dialogue goes beyond integrating the viewpoints of two or more people; it produces an outcome that none of the parties involved could have anticipated in advance. That’s because our brains don’t work like computers (thank goodness) but instead allow us to take bits of information, sometimes at an unconscious level, and use creativity to morph them into something else entirely. While there are individual creative geniuses, it’s safe to say that the bulk of our progress as human beings has emerged from dialogues among us, as most great ideas are inspired by conversations and jointly authored. Einstein was brilliant but it took the Manhattan project and Robert Oppenheim to drive a crew of scientists forward in achieving breakthroughs in the application of Einstein’s ideas.
Why this is important to business is that improvements in processes and innovations in products are what we rely upon to fuel the engine of competitiveness. Even in the current age of Artificial Intelligence, most people talk about two primary benefits that AI can bestow: improving efficiency by replacing human labor with faster, cheaper and more reliable algorithms, and supercharging growth by allowing access to knowledge that enables more rapid and consequential innovation. The success of the latter will depend not only in an organization’s understanding of how to utilize the capabilities AI brings, but to listen to what it recommends. The same issues that interfere with achieving the benefits of dialogue among humans will limit the utility of investments in AI unless they are attended to.
Bohm would have us understand that dialogue involves more than simply sharing opinions. It involves an effort to uncover deeper insights that emerge from careful listening and consideration of the flow of conversation that takes place. It’s not a ping pong match where we take turns hurling opinions at one another or a quest for dominance by one party over another. If this is what your executive team or board meetings feel like, you’ve got a problem, and you need to address it now before things become much worse in the coming age of AI.
Writers speak of our use of AI maturing from it being a tool that we call upon to address a specific need to a thought partner and collaborator. More than consulting AI to see if our conclusions are correct, we allow AI to generate suggestions which we take as seriously as those offered by anyone else at the table. While I should note that we aren’t yet at the stage where we can trust that AI will steer us in the right direction without hallucinating, AI is getting better quickly. As AI improves, it will become more capable of taking on executive functions, such as strategic thinking and decision-making under uncertainty. It’s then that you team or board’s ability to dialogue with AI could have a profound influence on your company’s future, if you allow it.
The challenge with dialogue is our human inability to divorce ourselves from our strongly held views, which interferes with our ability to listen and be influenced by others, whether they be other humans or AI bots. The question any smart businessperson must ask themselves is, “Why do I invite people with different viewpoints to join my team if I don’t allow those viewpoints to be fully expressed, understood, and integrated into my own thinking?” Most of us would say we are open to hearing the ideas of others, but the human editing function takes place subconsciously and in milliseconds. The moment we interpret another’s speech as opposed to our own viewpoint, our minds begin formulating counterarguments, blocking our ability to truly listen. We can tell ourselves consciously to suspend judgment but even that betrays the subconscious process that is occurring, namely judging. It would be wonderful if our brains had a switch that allowed us to simply listen to what another person has to say without judgment immediately creeping in. Unfortunately, we don’t.
Therefore, deriving the potential benefits of dialogue depends on two things: our ability to overcome what our brains are telling us and the ability of the other to make themselves heard despite the difficulties we create. Have you been in meetings where someone refuses to give up on their point of view, despite the rest of the group sending signal after signal that they disagree? That kind of refusal to be made irrelevant is what is sometimes required for a person’s viewpoint to be heard. If that lone voice is correct, we owe that person a debt of gratitude for not retreating from the fight. Still, that person won’t be truly heard and allowed to influence the decision until members of the group make an effort to suspend their convictions and consider the implications of the lone dissenter being right.
In the age of AI, our agentic thought partners aren’t going to fight back. We just shut them off and carry on as if we never consulted them. AI will allow us enough rope to hang ourselves and never give a care about our future. It’s up to us to keep the dialogue going, and we will only do that if we are aware that AI is expressing a different viewpoint that we are choosing to ignore. To prevent disaster, teams need to adopt a simple rule: if you feel the need to ask AI for its opinion, don’t then ignore what it says without giving it the same consideration that you would an expert on the topic.
A special note about executive teams and dialogue concerns the role of the CEO. No matter how hard a CEO works at tempering the influence of their remarks, their opinions will carry more weight than those of others. It’s just how our brain works. The CEO-founder of a well-known food chain once asked me how he could turn off the “reptilian brain” response of his direct reports so that they didn’t just parrot back his ideas. He knew exactly what the challenge of creating the context for authentic dialogue in the C-suite entails. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the surgery for removing the reptilian portion of our brains hasn’t yet been invented. CEOs can create task forces to study ideas and bring back recommendations but even then, those committees do their thinking with a subconscious understanding of what the boss wants to hear.
The only real way to overcome the challenge of dialogue is to put in place rules or agreements that will kick in when the moment calls for it. The rules would specify that no discussion is complete until several alternatives have been thoroughly explored, including at least one that runs counter to the thinking of the CEO or majority of the group. Moreover, the rules would state that anyone can call for this more careful approach when they think it necessary and the group would be required to slow down so that it could adopt it.
Teams struggle with following these rules, especially when it matters the most: when there is a lot on the line or during a crisis that demands an immediate response. If we give in to our reptilian brains, there is little that the potential brilliance of the team or AI will do to save us.