How to be right often

From Some advice from Jeff Bezos:

During one of his answers, he shared an enlightened observation about people who are “right a lot”.

He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.

Notes:

1. This is one of the largest energy drains in an organization: convincing some people to change their minds who are resistant to sound reason and hard facts because they feel changing their stance will make them look stupid.

2. Related: many leaders and risk-takers have an ego and reputation to defend, and that leads them to only attempt things on a grand scale instead of starting small, learning quickly, and being agile. This usually comes at the cost to the team and of the business opportunity.