Managers who disagree with a proposal state the objection in writing before the decision, with reasons and the risks they foresee, and then carry out the decision if it goes ahead.
An example
To meet a customer delivery commitment, the operations vice president of a specialty chemicals company wanted the annual maintenance shutdown at its largest plant cut from twenty-one days to fourteen. The plant manager thought seven days was too much to take out of a schedule that included pressure-vessel inspections. Two days before the executive committee met, she sent its members a two-page memo: the inspections she believed could not be compressed safely, the contractor hours the shorter plan assumed, and three risks with estimated costs. She closed by saying she would run whatever schedule the committee approved. The committee chose seventeen days, keeping the inspections whole and cutting time elsewhere. She ran the seventeen-day shutdown, and it finished a day early.
Why it works
Written dissent makes the proposal look worse to the deciders by putting specific risks and costs in front of them before they commit, from someone who knows the work. The promise to carry out whatever is decided gives it force, because the deciders can weigh the objection without wondering whether it signals obstruction later. Its force comes from being written, specific, timely, sent to the people who decide, and backed by the expertise the risk rests on.
The thinking behind it
Albert O. Hirschman In Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (1970), Albert Hirschman describes voice, trying to change an organization from within through complaint, protest, or proposals, as the response of members who stay, and treats loyalty as what holds back exit long enough for voice to work. A written dissent followed by full execution is voice joined to loyalty: it says what is wrong, and the promise to carry out the decision shows the speaker is staying.
When it fits
Called for when you disagree with a decision in your area of competence, the stakes are real, and the decision has not yet been made. It needs standing to address the deciders, facts to support your concerns, and a willingness to execute the decision whichever way it goes. Matters of taste and decisions already settled do not warrant it.
How to use it well
Write it before the decision, while it can still change the outcome. A memo after the fact reads as covering yourself.
- Address it to the people who decide, through the normal channel, and tell the sponsor you are sending it.
- State the objection, the reasons, the risks you see, and what each would cost.
- Propose what would change your mind or reduce the risk, if anything would.
- Say plainly that you will carry out the decision.
Then do it, fully and well. If your warning comes true, report the facts without pointing to the memo; the people who read it will remember.
What it costs and where it backfires
Putting dissent in writing can strain your relationship with the sponsor, and some cultures read any written objection as disloyal. If the risks never appear, you look alarmist. Carrying out a decision you argued against is hard, and doing it half-heartedly undoes the move. The clean form needs good faith in both halves: a memo written to set up blame later, or execution slowed to prove the memo right, turns dissent into sabotage.
When it is used on you
Answer a colleague's written dissent on your proposal point by point, in writing, before the decision. Change the plan where they are right. Thank them for the clear record, and hold them to their promise to carry out the result.