If you don't have a naysayer on your team — get one!

“No meeting would be complete without Nikki, a.k.a. Miss Grumpy, offering her opinion on what was wrong.”

From the book, The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey.

You probably have a naysayer like Nikki on your team. When everyone on the team is in agreement on what should be done, she asks “Why?” While your natural inclination may be to stifle her or even eliminate her from the team, Harvard Professor, J. Richard Hackman believes that would be a mistake. He contends that every team needs one deviant and that if your team doesn’t have at least one, you should go out and find one.

In an interview in this month’s issue of Harvard Business Review titled “Why Teams Don’t Work,” Hackman debunks many long-held beliefs about the wisdom of teams. On the subject of the value of  having naysayers on a team, he provides convincing evidence that in order to be successful, every  team needs someone to ask the tough questions. “In our research, we’ve looked  at teams that produced something original and those that were merely average, where nothing really sparkled. It turned out that the teams with deviants outperformed teams without them. In many cases, deviant thinking is the source of great innovation.”

Hackman also points out that the person who questions the status quo does so at their own peril. As someone who has played the role of deviant many times in groups, I know it takes a lot of courage to go against grain.  When I raised a question or voiced a concern in a meeting, I noticed two distinct reactions: anger on the part of those who were invested in “The Way to Go ” and gratitude from those who were thinking the same thing I was, but didn’t want to be the one to articulate it.

This week, hug the deviant in your group.