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This is a thoughtful take: “In my experience, ‘strong opinions, weakly held’ is difficult to put into practice… [instead] ask: ‘how much are you willing to bet on that?’ Doing so will jolt people into the types of thinking you want to encourage.” — commoncog.com/blog/strong-op

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Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Jul 21, 2020

In practice, I've found that it is difficult to maintain an overconfident stance in the face of a wager, especially when new info appears and I begin to prod for % adjustments in the belief. Also in practice, it becomes a norm, and the team goes 👎 to someone who doesn't update.

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What do you recommend?

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Oh, if it isn't clear, I'm the author of the piece :)

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I realized that after my reply! 🤦‍♀️ When you say "doesn't update" do you mean when someone doesn't change their opinions in light of new evidence?

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Yup! It became a norm in my team. I think for technical decision making it wasn't as useful (just a way to get people to express how confident their judgements were) but with business decision making, it became super useful, because high uncertainty re: competitors.

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So my boss would go "I think we should go after this subsegment because x, y" and I would pin him down on a confidence %. Then, every month afterwards, we would revise the % as new information emerged. It was better at keeping our judgments fluid than Saffo's dictum ever was.

1:34 AM · Jul 22, 2020Twitter Web App

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I love this example. Thanks for sharing your insight! Inspiring!