Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

I’ve been pretty obsessed about the difference between smart people and wise people for years. I tried to write a book called “The Attitude of Wisdom” a couple times. And the virtues of wise people – those who have the courage to act on their knowledge, but the humility to doubt what they know – is one of the main themes in Hard Facts. We show how leaders including Xerox’s Ann Mulcahy, Intel’s Any Grove, Harrah’s Gary Loveman, and IDEO’s David Kelley turn this attitude into organizational action. Perhaps the best description I’ve ever seen of how wise people act comes from the amazing folks at Palo Alto’s Institute for the Future. A couple years ago, I was talking the Institute’s Bob Johansen about wisdom, and he explained that – to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward – they advise people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held.”  They've been giving this advice for years, and I understand that it was first developed by Instituite Director Paul Saffo.  Bob explained that weak opinions are problematic because people aren’t inspired to develop the best arguments possible for them, or to put forth the energy required to test them. Bob explained that it was just as important, however, to not be too attached to what you believe because, otherwise, it undermines your ability to “see” and “hear” evidence that clashes with your opinions. This is what psychologists sometimes call the problem of “confirmation bias.”

Comments

[mike frazzini]

interesting post. several years ago i read a book by i think either kant or heideger who said something like "knowledge is the willingness to learn more". sorry to say that i don't remember the author or the exact wording, but if you agree with the earlier "breakthrough business ideas?", then i suppose it doesn't matter anyway. as the quote relates to this post, i've always made the distinction between smart and wise as along these lines.

smart vs. wise is a good question. i've also wondered somewhat similarly about the correlation between smart and successful. success, of course, being defined along any number of axes.

[Tom Mandel]

This is one of those wonderful ideas which, once you read it, starts to resonate in everything you experience and do over the next few days and weeks. Good stuff!

[jeff angus]

I think that combo -- Strong Opinions, Weakly Held is also a necessary precursor for planning -- the need in an organization to plan for the future while still competing in the present.

One's plans have to flex and gradually shift away from a successful present set of factors without losing the sharp focus on the factors that promote immediate success.

So not just "too attached to what you believe" but the closely-related "too attached to what makes you great now".