Disagreements are natural in large organizations. You may be asked to “disagree & commit” in contentious discussions, and it will be celebrated as good leadership.
In my experience, the explicit introduction of disagree & commit appears to happen at a certain scale once leadership no longer thinks the organization can be as effective as it used to be. To me it has always felt like a sign that the organization has peaked - after all disagree & commit is rarely what led teams to success in the first place.
Disagree and commit makes visible disagreements disappear temporarily, but it keeps the underlying differences unresolved. People fundamentally still disagree because it’s hard to internalize something you don’t agree with. It often leads to members of the team becoming indifferent about the work, and over months and years it causes rifts.
That doesn’t mean avoiding disagreements. I’m known to be strongly opinionated and to defend those opinions. I enjoy working with people who operate with a similar conviction. I don’t want others to have the same opinions, I just want to work with people who feel strongly about what they are doing.
This is explicitly not “strong opinions, weakly held” either – yet another poor big-tech leadership principle. If your opinions are weakly held, you might not need to have opinions at all. You should have strong values, be able to justify your opinions from first principles, and be open to changing your mind - sometimes in heated arguments.
It’s ok to disagree at first, but if you want to truly build great things you have to work hard to get agreement early, and then work together as one unit. Don’t disagree & commit.
