The value of disagreement

Earlier this month I came across a podcast that I have absolutely fallen in love with. Rarely do I find myself hooked onto hour long podcasts, but in this case the topics that are addressed could not be more interesting. One of these is on the value of dissent or disagreement. Charlan Nemeth gives one of the most convincing arguments for something that makes me incredibly uncomfortable: that it seems like we are growing further apart as political differences drive us into silos. Nemeth sees the value and power of genuine dissent as one of the most constructive features of human conversation. Whether it is to challenge and thus strengthen an argument by finding explanations to the counterarguments, or by indeed enabling us understand topics differently to how we did originally.

I wanted to reflect on this topic specifically to what it has been in my life. I am someone that loves entering a debate and sometimes is a little too hard-set about their opinions. Nemeth says there is a need to enter these discussions with conviction, otherwise it is not as useful as it could be. I think as I craft my character, I feel it has been more so conviction than actual stubbornness, especially because I also consider that sometimes I may be quick off the ball to pivot my position and my thoughts. As the main person leading inaglobe, I wanted to write this piece also to invite everyone in my context to challenge me, to disagree with me, to tell me where I am wrong or where I am missing things. One of my biggest worries of engaging in a position of leadership is that I will drive it to a local maxima rather than its full potential, and there is no one better to rely on than those that care about the problem we are solving more than they care about my opinion. And this doesn’t just apply to inaglobe, I invite everyone that I work with at Ankorstore, my loved ones and my acquaintances. We need to foster these healthy debates where dissent is permitted so that we can find the real path to success.

Dissent and disagreement have been cornerstone in building a stronger case for some of the most difficult projects I have embarked on this year. And the feeling that you have when a reasonable and very capable person disagrees with you and puts you against the current is very similar to that of when you are trying to solve a puzzle you can’t quite figure out. Even though I am one that has never shied away from expressing my opinion in a constructive and respectful manner, I can’t say that I have generally aimed to be in that puzzled and challenged headspace. After reflecting on this topic, I see that the value of being outside of your area of comfort applies when trying to overcome challenges. I have often interpreted the concept very physically as I am someone to bias for geographical, industry and expertise “discomfort” zones, but I find that it goes even a little further than that. There is a universe in our minds that can be challenged through strong debates and discussions, even totally out of context.

Reflecting on this personally, I am lucky enough to share friendships with some of the most amazingly creative and curious people I know. We have had the strangest of debates about our understanding of life and freedom in such a way that, now in this prism, I recognise as deeply enriching. And it really is all down to permitting dissent, permitting disagreement, and building a safe space to be wrong, to challenge and be challenged. Naturally, this isn’t necessarily something that can be projected into any walk of life but in what refers to personal relationships, being able to trust each other to help build the strongest case for whatever is at hand is paramount.

With inaglobe, a year and a half into founding the project, I was in a deep conversation with someone I deeply admire that helped me originally define the model under which we wanted to operate under. In this conversation there was a very strong stance of why it would be a good idea to close the project and write a post-mortem as it was seemingly difficult to get the model right as we had discussed it. I remember coming out of this conversation with a huge sense of responsibility about what I had been challenged with. I considered the option of closing the project off and leaving things sufficiently documented for anyone to come along and build it themselves, but I decided that instead this was an opportunity to problem solve. The main concern regarding this conversation was whether this was a worthwhile investment of time for our humanitarian partners: innovation is high risk, highly unlikely to be ready any time soon let alone the solution, it will take effort, students are in the process of learning and training, and there are stakeholders that the humanitarian partners work with that will directly benefit from the time they invest in them (so opportunity cost). We understood that this meant we had to make sure the process was seamless, that there was alignment on modus operandi and to ensure we communicate transparently to manage expectations. It also meant that we needed to communicate differently: the innovation the students could provide would not be the same kind to what the big tech firms could achieve, it was about bringing in a different kind of problem-solver, brilliant nonetheless, to develop solutions. That isn’t to say we have cracked the code, some of our humanitarian partners do not have a good experience with us, and that serves as motivation to continue iterating. We are just at the beginning of this project, and all the dissent and disagreement has been key in helping shape both the foundations and the day to day of how we want to operate. Unwittingly, our openness to criticism is what has driven us to where we are today.

This was a short thought piece rather than a structured article as I try to strive for, but it was a way of recognising a topic that really stimulated me and that I felt it was important to propagate about. We are increasingly in a world where we do not listen to each other out of sheer disagreement, and I believe that disagreement, itself, is the also a gift, and not only that it is the best way to collectively thinking, understanding, and overcoming the biggest and smallest challenges that we encounter.