[Laughter]
let me play the devil’s advocate for a
moment I’m sure you’ve all heard that
phrase if your spouse says to you don’t
you think my new haircut looks great
it’s not advisable to say let me play
the devil’s advocate for a moment or if
you do you better be wearing body armor
but I’ve had give you ever wondered
where does this concept this technique
of the devil’s advocate originate well
let me take you back to 1587 – Pope
Sixtus v he was designing the modern
process of canonization the system by
which the Catholic Church would
recognize deceased individuals as sings
he decided to appoint a senior official
of a church as promoter of the faith the
notion here was that they would play the
devil’s advocate let me explain how the
process was to work suppose that someone
nominated me for sainthood I know hard
to believe proponents of my candidacy
would argue that I had lived a holy and
exemplary life the devil’s advocates job
would be to argue that I was a sinner
not a saint and only if you could
overcome the objections of the devil’s
advocate could I become a saint now
unfortunately at this point I’m dead so
I don’t get to defend myself against the
devil’s advocate and therefore very few
people became Saints it was a very
exclusive club and the process worked
that way for centuries now for centuries
others look to this and thought the
devil’s advocate this technique can be
used to improve group decision-making
but more recently innovation expert Tom
Kelley of IDEO the leading design firm
has said that the devil’s advocate is a
single biggest innovation killer in
corporate America today does the devil’s
advocate destroy creativity should we
abolish it from creative processes like
Design Thinking Kelley statement
troubles me greatly as a scholar of
decision-making over the last 20 years
I’ve been a proponent of devil’s
advocacy
my research and the research of others
shows that in fact this technique can
improve the level of critical thinking
and improve the level of quality of the
decisions we make in all realms of life
so what do I make it at though is there
a cost to devil’s advocacy now
interestingly in the early 1980s pope
john paul ii reformed the canonization
process and the promoter of the faith
was no longer to play the role of
devil’s advocate and during his tenure
of a little over two decades nearly 500
people were recognized as Saints far
more than him in named in the entire
20th century prior to his tenure remove
the devil’s advocate and suddenly people
became holier but wait a second even the
Pope agrees with Tom Kelley maybe I
really do have to question my own
beliefs about the benefits of devil’s
advocacy researchers have been studying
this technique for many years and in
fact David Schweiger and his colleagues
pioneered in the 1980’s a series of
experimental studies looking at how
devil’s advocacy compares to other
methods of group decision-making and
over the last 22 years I’ve been using a
modification of his experimental design
in in-class exercises with my students
we have them experience two methods for
group decision-making the first we’ll
call the consensus method a group
gathers in a collegial fashion they’re
allowing each member to share their
ideas freely and they’re trying to work
together to come to some agreement to
some alignment as to the course of
action they’d like to implement on the
other hand and devil’s advocacy the team
breaks into two sub groups one sub group
proposes new ideas solutions to whatever
problem they’ve encountered and the
other sub groups entire purpose and
objective throughout the process is to
play the devil’s advocate to critique
those ideas to find the weaknesses and
the flaws and through that give-and-take
they are to arrive at a decision now
interestingly after the students
experience these processes I survey them
I asked them as they did in experimental
studies to evaluate the process that
they’ve just experienced and what we
find well not surprisingly there are far
more disagreements when the devil’s
advocate is present in fact we find a
higher level of what scholars call
cognitive conflict issue-oriented debate
and overtime scholars have found that
higher levels of cognitive conflict mean
we generate more alternatives we probe
our assumptions more carefully we
uncover hidden risks and we make better
decisions but wait look what the
students say when asked well how good
was the decision that you arrived at
they report that the consensus method
leads to higher quality decisions oh my
goodness how do we reconcile you know
our hypotheses with what the students
say but Schweiger and his colleagues and
others who’ve run experimental studies
they’ve of course not relied only on
what students say about their own
decisions they’ve brought in expert
judges to rate the quality of the
choices that these groups make and the
expert judges consistently time and
again say that groups that use devil’s
advocacy make higher quality decisions
but why do the students say differently
well because if you experience a
collegial comfortable friendly
harmonious process of consensus you walk
out of that meeting feeling really good
patting each other on the back and
wanting to have a beer with one another
it doesn’t mean you’ve made a good
decision in fact you might have just
experienced groupthink the tension that
comes with devil’s advocacy sometimes
makes you question whether you really
made the right call but actually expert
judges say you did now not only does the
experimental work in our in-class
exercises reinforce the benefits of
devil’s advocacy but there are many
examples of leaders using devil’s
advocacy to make better decisions
certainly in business we hear leaders
like ory hadami the CEO of Israeli based
firm Mesa robotics talking about how he
uses he devil’s advocate on his team to
protect against overly optimistic or
rosy scenarios in their strategic
planning or Bob
the founder of MTV who will say to his
team when they bring him a proposal what
did the dissenter say and if they say to
him everybody’s on board he sends them
out of his office you haven’t looked
enough you haven’t found that other side
it’s out there go find it it will
sharpen your ideas well my favorite
example of Devil’s aBSI comes from my
study of the Cuban Missile Crisis it’s
the fall of 1962 and John Kennedy
discovers that the Soviets are working
with the Castro regime to put in place
nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba
and I had the opportunity to study this
not just from the history books but 13
years ago I spent a day with Robert
McNamara the secretary of defense for
John Kennedy he was 89 years old at the
time but sharpest attack and he
described the role of two men during
that crisis Bobby Kennedy the
president’s brother and Attorney General
and Ted Sorensen another special adviser
they were told to be the intellectual
watchdogs throughout the process the
devil’s advocates to relentlessly pursue
every issue to make sure that they did
not derive conclusions from superficial
analysis and mcnamara said the devil’s
advocate was a crucial factor and not
only getting them to a better solution
but in fact surface seeing a key
alternative that was not there in the
beginnings of their discussion it wasn’t
always comfortable but he said you know
sometimes you have to force people to
disagree to get to better ideas so the
devil’s advocate leads to better
critical thinking but does it lead to
better creative thinking well
interestingly in a recent New York Times
article Adam grant of the Wharton School
talked about how we raise our kids he
said you know usually the advice we have
R appearances teach your kids to get
along with one another but Grant said no
no we have to teach our kids to argue
with one another but to argue well why
he points to the remarkable creative
accomplishments of dynamic duo’s like
Lennon and McCartney like Steve Jobs and
Steve Wozniak like the Wright brothers
and points to the tension that existed
in those relationships and he argues
that out of that tension emerged
creative breakthrough
but wait a second in design thinking we
teach people to brainstorm and in the
brainstorming process we tell them don’t
critique each other’s ideas every idea
is a good idea accept each other’s ideas
and build upon them don’t say yeah but
yeah but that won’t work yeah but we
tried that before yeah but we don’t have
the resources do that instead should be
like an improv comedian you just say yes
and accept their ideas and build upon
but there have been critics of
brainstorming and they point in
particular to a study by Charlene Nemeth
and they derived the following
conclusion from her study they say she
found that arguing and debating leads to
more creative ideas than brainstorming
but they’re wrong that’s not actually
what she found what she actually found
is that when the critique happens
matters that you need to brainstorm
first and then argue and if you combine
the two in that order you get the most
creative ideas so it’s not about whether
or not to use the devil’s advocate it’s
when you use the devil’s advocate if you
unleash the devil’s advocate in the
early stages of problem solving what
will happen
well one person’s ideas will be
critiqued perhaps harshly what will
everyone else do they’ll self censor
well I’m not putting my idea out there
if other ideas just kind of litter ated
and so all kinds of creative
alternatives never surface so it’s not
about whether or not to use the devil’s
advocate it’s when you use it but more
importantly I found it’s also how you
play the devil’s advocate in my research
have noticed two patterns in terms of
how we play the devil’s advocate I’ve
done that by watching how management
teams function in boardrooms around the
world and you really see two patterns in
one pattern of devil’s advocacy what you
see is a few ideas emerge and the
devil’s advocates view their role as to
poke holes to find all of the flaws in
those ideas and argue against them
further
and often the devil’s advocates are
taking a position of their own on the
issues and putting forth that position
by making loud and striding arguments
but there’s another kind of devil’s
advocate a much more productive one this
kind of doubles out it gets seasoned
idea emerge and views their role as
helping the group to generate new
options and how do they do that through
the Socratic method they don’t make a
lot of statements of their own opinion
but they ask a lot of questions and as
they ask those questions new ideas pop
up over time they don’t pretend to know
everything they acknowledge what they
don’t know they’re there to help the
process and to enable the team to engage
in more divergent thinking they’re not
there to reject others ideas that kind
of devil’s advocate can be very
productive and help unleash creative
breakthroughs so what do I conclude it’s
not about whether or not we should have
a doubles advocate it’s about when the
devil’s advocate enters the process and
how we play the role if we get the when
and the how right we’ll have amazing
creative breakthroughs I’ll close by
recalling the words of David Hume he
once said truth Springs from arguments
amongst friends I’d like to be so bold
as to rephrase Hume statement creativity
flourishes Springs from constructive and
timely arguments amongst friends thank
you very much
let me play the devil’s advocate for a
moment I’m sure you’ve all heard that
phrase if your spouse says to you don’t
you think my new haircut looks great
it’s not advisable to say let me play
the devil’s advocate for a moment or if
you do you better be wearing body armor
but I’ve had give you ever wondered
where does this concept this technique
of the devil’s advocate originate well
let me take you back to 1587 – Pope
Sixtus v he was designing the modern
process of canonization the system by
which the Catholic Church would
recognize deceased individuals as sings
he decided to appoint a senior official
of a church as promoter of the faith the
notion here was that they would play the
devil’s advocate let me explain how the
process was to work suppose that someone
nominated me for sainthood I know hard
to believe proponents of my candidacy
would argue that I had lived a holy and
exemplary life the devil’s advocates job
would be to argue that I was a sinner
not a saint and only if you could
overcome the objections of the devil’s
advocate could I become a saint now
unfortunately at this point I’m dead so
I don’t get to defend myself against the
devil’s advocate and therefore very few
people became Saints it was a very
exclusive club and the process worked
that way for centuries now for centuries
others look to this and thought the
devil’s advocate this technique can be
used to improve group decision-making
but more recently innovation expert Tom
Kelley of IDEO the leading design firm
has said that the devil’s advocate is a
single biggest innovation killer in
corporate America today does the devil’s
advocate destroy creativity should we
abolish it from creative processes like
Design Thinking Kelley statement
troubles me greatly as a scholar of
decision-making over the last 20 years
I’ve been a proponent of devil’s
advocacy
my research and the research of others
shows that in fact this technique can
improve the level of critical thinking
and improve the level of quality of the
decisions we make in all realms of life
so what do I make it at though is there
a cost to devil’s advocacy now
interestingly in the early 1980s pope
john paul ii reformed the canonization
process and the promoter of the faith
was no longer to play the role of
devil’s advocate and during his tenure
of a little over two decades nearly 500
people were recognized as Saints far
more than him in named in the entire
20th century prior to his tenure remove
the devil’s advocate and suddenly people
became holier but wait a second even the
Pope agrees with Tom Kelley maybe I
really do have to question my own
beliefs about the benefits of devil’s
advocacy researchers have been studying
this technique for many years and in
fact David Schweiger and his colleagues
pioneered in the 1980’s a series of
experimental studies looking at how
devil’s advocacy compares to other
methods of group decision-making and
over the last 22 years I’ve been using a
modification of his experimental design
in in-class exercises with my students
we have them experience two methods for
group decision-making the first we’ll
call the consensus method a group
gathers in a collegial fashion they’re
allowing each member to share their
ideas freely and they’re trying to work
together to come to some agreement to
some alignment as to the course of
action they’d like to implement on the
other hand and devil’s advocacy the team
breaks into two sub groups one sub group
proposes new ideas solutions to whatever
problem they’ve encountered and the
other sub groups entire purpose and
objective throughout the process is to
play the devil’s advocate to critique
those ideas to find the weaknesses and
the flaws and through that give-and-take
they are to arrive at a decision now
interestingly after the students
experience these processes I survey them
I asked them as they did in experimental
studies to evaluate the process that
they’ve just experienced and what we
find well not surprisingly there are far
more disagreements when the devil’s
advocate is present in fact we find a
higher level of what scholars call
cognitive conflict issue-oriented debate
and overtime scholars have found that
higher levels of cognitive conflict mean
we generate more alternatives we probe
our assumptions more carefully we
uncover hidden risks and we make better
decisions but wait look what the
students say when asked well how good
was the decision that you arrived at
they report that the consensus method
leads to higher quality decisions oh my
goodness how do we reconcile you know
our hypotheses with what the students
say but Schweiger and his colleagues and
others who’ve run experimental studies
they’ve of course not relied only on
what students say about their own
decisions they’ve brought in expert
judges to rate the quality of the
choices that these groups make and the
expert judges consistently time and
again say that groups that use devil’s
advocacy make higher quality decisions
but why do the students say differently
well because if you experience a
collegial comfortable friendly
harmonious process of consensus you walk
out of that meeting feeling really good
patting each other on the back and
wanting to have a beer with one another
it doesn’t mean you’ve made a good
decision in fact you might have just
experienced groupthink the tension that
comes with devil’s advocacy sometimes
makes you question whether you really
made the right call but actually expert
judges say you did now not only does the
experimental work in our in-class
exercises reinforce the benefits of
devil’s advocacy but there are many
examples of leaders using devil’s
advocacy to make better decisions
certainly in business we hear leaders
like ory hadami the CEO of Israeli based
firm Mesa robotics talking about how he
uses he devil’s advocate on his team to
protect against overly optimistic or
rosy scenarios in their strategic
planning or Bob
the founder of MTV who will say to his
team when they bring him a proposal what
did the dissenter say and if they say to
him everybody’s on board he sends them
out of his office you haven’t looked
enough you haven’t found that other side
it’s out there go find it it will
sharpen your ideas well my favorite
example of Devil’s aBSI comes from my
study of the Cuban Missile Crisis it’s
the fall of 1962 and John Kennedy
discovers that the Soviets are working
with the Castro regime to put in place
nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba
and I had the opportunity to study this
not just from the history books but 13
years ago I spent a day with Robert
McNamara the secretary of defense for
John Kennedy he was 89 years old at the
time but sharpest attack and he
described the role of two men during
that crisis Bobby Kennedy the
president’s brother and Attorney General
and Ted Sorensen another special adviser
they were told to be the intellectual
watchdogs throughout the process the
devil’s advocates to relentlessly pursue
every issue to make sure that they did
not derive conclusions from superficial
analysis and mcnamara said the devil’s
advocate was a crucial factor and not
only getting them to a better solution
but in fact surface seeing a key
alternative that was not there in the
beginnings of their discussion it wasn’t
always comfortable but he said you know
sometimes you have to force people to
disagree to get to better ideas so the
devil’s advocate leads to better
critical thinking but does it lead to
better creative thinking well
interestingly in a recent New York Times
article Adam grant of the Wharton School
talked about how we raise our kids he
said you know usually the advice we have
R appearances teach your kids to get
along with one another but Grant said no
no we have to teach our kids to argue
with one another but to argue well why
he points to the remarkable creative
accomplishments of dynamic duo’s like
Lennon and McCartney like Steve Jobs and
Steve Wozniak like the Wright brothers
and points to the tension that existed
in those relationships and he argues
that out of that tension emerged
creative breakthrough
but wait a second in design thinking we
teach people to brainstorm and in the
brainstorming process we tell them don’t
critique each other’s ideas every idea
is a good idea accept each other’s ideas
and build upon them don’t say yeah but
yeah but that won’t work yeah but we
tried that before yeah but we don’t have
the resources do that instead should be
like an improv comedian you just say yes
and accept their ideas and build upon
but there have been critics of
brainstorming and they point in
particular to a study by Charlene Nemeth
and they derived the following
conclusion from her study they say she
found that arguing and debating leads to
more creative ideas than brainstorming
but they’re wrong that’s not actually
what she found what she actually found
is that when the critique happens
matters that you need to brainstorm
first and then argue and if you combine
the two in that order you get the most
creative ideas so it’s not about whether
or not to use the devil’s advocate it’s
when you use the devil’s advocate if you
unleash the devil’s advocate in the
early stages of problem solving what
will happen
well one person’s ideas will be
critiqued perhaps harshly what will
everyone else do they’ll self censor
well I’m not putting my idea out there
if other ideas just kind of litter ated
and so all kinds of creative
alternatives never surface so it’s not
about whether or not to use the devil’s
advocate it’s when you use it but more
importantly I found it’s also how you
play the devil’s advocate in my research
have noticed two patterns in terms of
how we play the devil’s advocate I’ve
done that by watching how management
teams function in boardrooms around the
world and you really see two patterns in
one pattern of devil’s advocacy what you
see is a few ideas emerge and the
devil’s advocates view their role as to
poke holes to find all of the flaws in
those ideas and argue against them
further
and often the devil’s advocates are
taking a position of their own on the
issues and putting forth that position
by making loud and striding arguments
but there’s another kind of devil’s
advocate a much more productive one this
kind of doubles out it gets seasoned
idea emerge and views their role as
helping the group to generate new
options and how do they do that through
the Socratic method they don’t make a
lot of statements of their own opinion
but they ask a lot of questions and as
they ask those questions new ideas pop
up over time they don’t pretend to know
everything they acknowledge what they
don’t know they’re there to help the
process and to enable the team to engage
in more divergent thinking they’re not
there to reject others ideas that kind
of devil’s advocate can be very
productive and help unleash creative
breakthroughs so what do I conclude it’s
not about whether or not we should have
a doubles advocate it’s about when the
devil’s advocate enters the process and
how we play the role if we get the when
and the how right we’ll have amazing
creative breakthroughs I’ll close by
recalling the words of David Hume he
once said truth Springs from arguments
amongst friends I’d like to be so bold
as to rephrase Hume statement creativity
flourishes Springs from constructive and
timely arguments amongst friends thank
you very much
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