The Power of Discord

Johnnie Moore was gracious enough to invite me, along with Tom Guarriello of the True Talk blog, and Jennifer Rice of Brandshift, to play around in the podcasting pool yesterday. The subject was to discuss authenticity in business communications -- is it a fad? how do you do it? why don't more businesses do it?

I learned a few things from doing this:

(1) There's an interesting dilemma inherent in this format. If you're having a conversation about authenticity, but it is being recorded for a future, at-this-point imaginary audience -- is it really authentic? There was no audience, but our conversation would not have happened if we didn't think they would be there. Were our opinions shaped by our conscious knowledge of this future audience? Is it real or is it Memorex? Will leave this one for the philosophers and psychologists among us to ponder ...

(2) The bigger thing I realized was that discord and debate are underrated and underused in business. Mid-way through the podcast, Johnnie astutely observed that we were all patting each other on the back, throwing our own examples into the ring, and agreeing that authenticity is important. Ah, how a bit of outrage would have shaken things up!

In business, and in our personal lives, we try to hush debate and discord. We avoid confrontation. If a disagreement breaks out in a meeting, we try to table it or put it in the parking lot. But it is only through intelligent debate that truth emerges. It is only after you have wrestled through the mud of various perspectives that you can get to the right answer. Without that, we settle into group think and become the very clones that businesses want us to be.

Not only that, but a well-reasoned tirade is just plain fun to listen to! We all know this to be true, because we know how effective a good rant can be in the blogosphere.

I am not advocating outrage just for outrage's sake -- that just leads to the 'ole Crossfire Dilemma, which eventually leads to a spanking from Jon Stewart and your show's cancellation. But we should not fear disagreement and discord as much as we do (myself included).

(3) And finally, every single one of us was podcasting from our home offices. My totally unscientific conclusion from this is that the most innovative things are being done by people outside of companies. You have to escape the company if you are going to have time to explore and learn. I posted on this before, so will not go on about it here. But suffice it to say I was having a totally different conversation with my dogs walking in and out of the room than I would have had in a highrise with my boss walking in and out of my office.