Employ An Antagonist
“Opportunities often come from looking at things differently—from having a contrarian perspective.”
— Michael Dell, Play Nice But Win
The rate of technological change makes disruption an imminent threat for many established firms. One of the most sophisticated organizational theorists I know advocates a radical approach to innovation: hire a cohort of expert, hostile antagonists whose job is to systematically identify and exploit weaknesses in the incumbent business model. To my surprise, while the approach isn’t his IP, yet he considers it an indispensable tool to unlock organizational growth and realize outsized returns.
The idea actually comes from the military, where it was developed in response to failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to acclaimed author Bryce Hoffman, the only civilian from outside of government to ever be trained in the elite methodology in their graduate-level program,
“A lessons-learned team established at the Pentagon concluded that the military’s failure to challenge its own assumptions, a tendency to ignore disconfirming evidence and alternative perspectives, and an arrogance born of past success all contributed to the problem, so it decided to create a formal methodology for challenging its own thinking and stress-testing its own strategies. This methodology would rely on an array of applied critical thinking tools and groupthink mitigation techniques, all of which would be taught at a new school created specifically to train contrarian thinkers.” (from an understandably political editorial at Forbes)
The underlined portion sounds like a line taken straight from the Wall Street Journal, describing a once-celebrated business now disrupted.
Far beyond its application in the military, business strategists have been leveraging the approach to identify overlooked opportunities for growth as well as key vulnerabilities. Importantly, both the military and business organizations have realized that “friendly” sparring partners are insufficient to the task of challenging assumptions. All too often, they implicitly play by the same rules that make the organization vulnerable to disruption. They lack diversity of thought and creativity in regards to the angle of attack, the very strengths start-up disruptors often bring to the marketplace.
There are very clear parameters that experienced theorists, investors, and innovators have developed to increase the odds of success — but those are for another post. The point here is simply that making space for a contrarian mindset is essential to the creative enterprise and long-term sustainability of any organization.
This antagonistic, enemy-oriented mindset is one that innovative leaders from Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos have used to launch disruptive products like the iPhone and the Kindle.
Related: Proactive Disruption
Related: Hire An Assassin
Related: Dissent
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One of the defining contributions the d.school is helping teams ask themselves, “What kind of thinking is appropriate, when?” We call such clarity being “Mindful of Process.” And it can seem like semantics until you realize we need to show up in different ways.