Avoid the “tyranny of the articulate”
In many engineer-driven startups, world-class debaters end up making many of the decisions. Ben talked about why this is problematic:
There’s this tyranny of the articulate that happens at companies…But there’s only a loose correlation between how good people are at communicating and how good they are at actually building stuff.
I personally think debating is a horrible way to get to any solutions. There’s this idea that vigorous debate yields results, but in my experience, vigorous debate yields people who vigorously defend what they think. As a result, they’re unwilling to compromise at some point because it’s a debate and the objective is to win.
When it is necessary to have a debate, Ben offered this important reminder:
Most debates never get anywhere because there’s no clearly agreed upon goal. So scope what the actual problem is; articulate the goal.
Source: Pinterest Founder Ben Silbermann’s Lessons on Decision Making, Values, and Taking Time for Yourself