Have Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

The Are right, A Lot Amazon Leadership Principle reads:

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong business judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

A great mnemonic for remembering how to get better living the Are right, a lot LP is: Have strong opinions, weakly held. Stanford University professor Paul Saffo coined this term.

“Allow your intuition to guide you to a conclusion, no matter how imperfect — this is the ‘strong opinion’ part. Then –and this is the ‘weakly held’ part– prove yourself wrong. Engage in creative doubt. Look for information that doesn’t fit, or indicators that pointing in an entirely different direction. Eventually your intuition will kick in and a new hypothesis will emerge out of the rubble, ready to be ruthlessly torn apart once again. You will be surprised by how quickly the sequence of faulty forecasts will deliver you to a useful result.”
Paul Saffo

However, having strong opinions (weakly held) is necessary, but not sufficient. For example, CX designers and PMs know that I get pretty bent out of shape when I see a UI mockup with ‘placeholder’ text in it like this:

The PM and designer that mocked this up are both very smart with tons of real experience. They should have taken a few more minutes to make their best guess, no matter how imperfect, for what the text in that placeholder would be. If they had, we could have debated it (or moved on). Instead, we rat-holed.

Take a stand. Articulate it. Encourage debate. Change your mind if the debate is convincing. Not doing so will prevent you from ever raising the bar for being right, a lot.