BookYol

Concept

Disagree and commit

Disagree and commit is the common name, associated with Andrew Grove's Intel, for the third layer of Patrick Lencioni's pyramid: commitment means clarity and buy-in, not consensus. After the full argument the accountable person decides, and everyone, including those who argued the other way, commits.

Teams that wait for everyone to agree either never decide or decide so vaguely that each person leaves with a different version. The alternative depends on the layer below: people who were genuinely heard can support a decision they lost, because they know their objection was weighed rather than ignored. Commitment then has a form. At the end of every meeting the decisions are said aloud, with who does what by when, and the same words go to the people who were not in the room; Lencioni calls this cascading. A meeting that ends without that summary produced opinions, and the corridor will finish it. The manager's closing question ('Can everyone commit to this, including those who wanted the other way?') is the moment the honest no gets asked and answered in the room, instead of expressed later by not doing the work.

A real-life example

A school maths department in Trabzon argues for an hour about whether to drop its weekly quiz. The head of department decides to keep it for one more term, reads the decision aloud with who will rewrite the quizzes and by when, and asks whether anyone cannot commit. One teacher says she cannot. They talk it through, and she agrees to run the quiz in her classes and to bring her results to the review in June. The decision holds, and the June review settles it on evidence.

How to use it

  1. 1End every meeting by reading the decisions aloud with owners and dates.
  2. 2Ask whether anyone cannot commit, and deal with the no in the room.
  3. 3Send the same list in writing within the hour, including to people who were absent.