Strong opinions, weakly held

This is a cross-post from the Friesen Group Kansas EMS Transition project blog. It is a topic of interest to everyone who engages in organizations.

As dialogue, debate, and discussion continue around various EMS Transition questions, I was thinking about a post on Bob Sutton’s blog where he talks about the need for strong opinions, weakly held. The argument originated with persons from the Institute for the Future.

It starts by stating that we each need to have strong opinions. When we care passionately about something, we are willing to put our energy and time into learning about it, understanding it, and defending it. But the argument doesn’t stop there. The rest of the argument is that we need to hold our strong opinions loosely. If we’re too attached to our opinions, we lose the ability to hear and see other evidence and alternative ideas.

I close this post with a quote from Sutton, “Wisdom is the courage to act on your knowledge and the humility to doubt what you know.”