Cases proving the value of in-house critics, dissenters and whistle blowers demonstrate that “groupidity”, a special form of groupthink wherein we collectively become willing to take risks we individually recognize as stupid, is alive and well.
Since most new ideas fail, the Voice of Doom is often right, but they irritate the folks who are trying to make stuff work. Organizations exist for the purpose of doing stuff. That’s what their staff is hired to do. The person who says maybe we shouldn’t do that stuff—or the stuff we’re doing isn’t working—is not very popular.
“But if you listen carefully, you’ll find they are giving you something extremely useful: a list of everything that could go wrong with your plan.” Instead of shooting the messenger, think of the VOD as “”your defensive coordinator, identifying all of the holes you need to plug, and back up plans you need to have in place, before you launch. Give them a designated role on the team, telling you what’s likely to go wrong, and then pointing out when it does.”
The trick of course is getting the other workers to listen. Humans are social animals so bucking the group doesn’t come naturally to most of us. There’s a large body of literature on dissenters, and it mostly tells you what you already know if you’ve ever been to a project meeting: Nobody likes the Voice of Doom.