While I generally see myself as an upbeat and happy, I’ve written a bit about the opposite lately with thoughts on disagreeability and being a contrarian.
Following those lines, today is a bit from Seth Godin’s book “The Song of Significance“, where he encourages professionals to disagree. Really, he doesn’t encourage it — he demands it. From Seth:
“A professional, though, brings insight and reputation to the work. If they’re not speaking up, then they’ve sacrificed the very expertise and authority they worked so hard to earn. When a professional disagrees, alters the plan, or refuses to go along, they are doing the truly hard work of being a professional.”
As with the other posts I’ve shared on this, he’s not suggesting that you go out and try to disagree or refuse to go along, but rather that you insist on doing things the right way when you see them going astray.
It’s kind of like our “How We Work With You” statement that we share with potential clients. Among other things, we say:
“We’ll never hide the truth to convince you to take a certain path of action. If a campaign is not going well, we will share those numbers and work on ideas to get things going in the right direction. Data doesn’t lie, which is one of the reasons we rely on it heavily for decision-making.”
You should be disagreeable, you should be a contrarian, and you should always speak up, and if you do it with kindness everyone will win.
