Charlan Nemeth will dare you to think differently in her book. No! The power of disagreement in a world that wants to get along really touched a sensitive spot in my heart. I always thought that groups perform better in decision making because they have, presumably, more information ( this is called the 50-million-frenchmen-principle: an assumption that truth lies in numbers). This myth is busted and disintegrated in this book.
We need the rebels. We need the people who dare to think and act differently because they have a genuinely different perspective on things (think of famous dissenters in history like Freud, Galilei, Snowden, Jesus etc.). Dissenters are not liked and they get a lot of hate.To have the courage to stand up and say: “why do we do things like this?”, “ I do not agree with your perspective” or to obnoxiously ask questions like a hungry bounty hunter because you want to get to the bottom of things , all of these attitudes will not win you many friends.
A key point to take in your day to day life from this book is beautifully put into words by Charlan:
We especially have much to learn from those who think differently from us, the ones we might not seek as friends
Charlan Nemeth
This quote makes me reflect upon all of the moments when humans managed to exclude, lash out, belittle, mock , murder, humiliate, discriminate, block or hate people who dared to show them that they might have been wrong. It also makes me think of how narrow our group of friends can become: how can we think differently if we kept on having the same people in our company for the last decades?
Charlan Nemeth
People can follow the majority as much as 70 percent of the time, even when that majority is wrong
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