Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1482

The Unionization-Inflation Connection

In a study of inflation peaks that preceded monetary-policy adjustments in 21 nations between 1974 and 2004, Tony Caporale of the University of Dayton found that higher peaks were linked with higher levels of unionization. Specifically, a 1-standard-deviation increase in the percentage of public and private employees who were members of unions was associated with an 8.5% higher inflation rate at the peak before monetary adjustment. High levels of unionization can lead to wage inflexibility, which can contribute to consumer price increases.

Should Leaders Focus on Results, or on People?

A lot of ink has been spilled on people’s opinions of what makes for a great leader. As a scientist, I like to turn to the data.  In 2009, James Zenger published a fascinating survey of 60,000 employees to identify how different characteristics of a leader combine to affect employee perceptions of whether the boss is a “great” leader or not. Two of the characteristics that Zenger examined were results focus and social skills. Results focus combines strong analytical skills with an intense motivation to move forward and solve problems.  But if a leader was seen as being very strong on results focus, the chance of that leader being seen as a great leader was only 14%. Social skills combine attributes like communication and empathy. If a leader was strong on social skills, he or she was seen as a great leader even less of the time — a paltry 12%.

However, for leaders who were strong in both results focus and in social skills, the likelihood of being seen as a great leader skyrocketed to 72%.

Social skills are a great multiplier.  A leader with strong social skills can leverage the analytical abilities of team members far more efficiently. Having the social intelligence to predict how team members will work together will promote better pairings.  Often what initially appear to be task-related difficulties turn out to be interpersonal problems in disguise.  One employee may feel devalued by another or think that she is doing all the work while her partner loafs – leading both partners putting in less effort to solve otherwise solvable problems. Socially skilled leaders are better at diagnosing and treating these common workplace dilemmas.

So how many leaders are rated high on both results focus and social skills?  If this pairing produces especially effective leaders, companies should have figured this out and promoted people to leadership positions accordingly, right?  Not hardly.  David Rock, director of the Neuroleadership Institute, and Management Research Group recently conducted a survey to find out the answer.  They asked thousands of employees to rate their bosses on goal focus (similar to results focus) and social skills to examine how often a leader scored high on both.  The results are astonishing.  Less than 1% of leaders were rated high on both goal focus and social skills.

Why would this be?  As I describe in my book, Social: Why our brains are wired to connect, our brains have made it difficult to be both socially and analytically focused at the same time.  Even though thinking social and analytically don’t feel radically different, evolution built our brain with different networks for handling these two ways of thinking.  In the frontal lobe, regions on the outer surface, closer to the skull, are responsible for analytical thinking and are highly related to IQ.  In contrast, regions in the middle of the brain, where the two hemispheres touch, support social thinking.  These regions allow us to piece together a person’s thoughts, feelings, and goals based on what we see from their actions, words, and context.

Here’s the really surprising thing about the brain. These two networks function like a neural seesaw. In countless neuroimaging studies, the more one of these networks got more active, the more the other one got quieter.  Although there are some exceptions, in general, engaging in one of the kinds of thinking makes it harder to engage in the other kind.  Its safe to say that in business, analytical thinking has historically been the coin of the realm — making it harder to recognize the social issues that significantly affect productivity and profits.  Moreover, employees are much more likely to be promoted to leadership positions because of their technical prowess.  We are thus promoting people who may lack the social skills to make the most of their teams and not giving them the training they need to thrive once promoted.

How can we do better?  For one, we should give greater weight to social skills in the hiring and promotion process.  Second, we need to create a culture that rewards using both sides of the neural seesaw.  We may not be able to easily use them in tandem, but knowing that there is another angle to problem solving and productivity will create better balance in our leaders.

Finally, it may be possible to train our social thinking so that it becomes stronger over time. Social psychologists are just at the beginning stages of examining whether this kind of training will bear fruit.  One exciting prospect, one that would make the training fun, is the recent finding that reading fiction seems to temporarily strengthen these mental muscles.  Wouldn’t that be great — if reading Catcher in the Rye or the latest Grisham novel were the key to larger profits?

Where There’s a Why, There’s a Way

At least once a week, I hear my son, a junior in high school, say, “What is the point of school? I am never going to use [insert subject] again.”  He may or may not, depending on his chosen profession.  My counter-argument tends to be, “You may not use all of it.  Some of it you will.  Regardless, good grades get you into college, and knowing how to work gets you into a happy life.”  On days when I’m desperate, or just exasperated, I huff (and I puff): “Do it because I said to.”  At which point I lament aloud, “Why doesn’t he have a vision for what his future might hold?”

In her provocative piece, “The Last Thing You Need Is Vision,” Jesse Lyn Stoner explores the question of whether vision is overrated.  Her conclusion: in the case of a foundering business, you may need to start with clearing the decks and patching the leaks, but ultimately, you can’t expect to get anywhere without a vision.  Her piece started me thinking about the discovery-driven approach I emphasize in my work on dreaming and disrupting, versus embracing a vision at the outset.

Disruption is, by its very nature, discovery-driven. You can’t see the end from the beginning when you play where no one else is playing — so you simply start.  You move out of your comfort zone, away from the known, and at every step you have to stop, reevaluate, and recalibrate your course. “Vision” implies you have a view of exactly where you want to go and you chart a course accordingly, like plotting a journey on a map, a straightforward road with no distractions, roadblocks or alternate routes.

So what place does vision have in the midst of disruption?  When you are young, or when your why is non-existent or has gone missing, which happens to most of us at some juncture in our business or career, it may be that you just need to move forward.  Or as David Brooks has written, “most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.”

Despite these realities, I’ve come to believe that vision is imperative to staying the course when disrupting.  A would-be disruptor who hasn’t defined their “why” will easily be enticed back into the safety of the known. Compare Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant, says negotiating expert Jim Camp. Lincoln had a vision of saving the Union at any cost.  As a general of the Union troops, Grant hewed without hesitation to Lincoln’s vision.  “But as a president, Grant was a failure, taking bad advice, making bad decisions, mainly because he didn’t know why he was president and what he hoped to accomplish.” If you don’t have a powerful answer as to why you are disrupting, you can easily get distracted and lose your way. Paraphrasing Proverbs, Where there is no vision, we really do perish.

Trish Costello, founder of Portfolia, knows her “why”:  assist starts-up in growth and financing. Her “how” has morphed over the past two decades.  Costello founded and led for twelve years the prestigious Kauffman Fellows program, one of the world’s most respected private training programs for venture capitalists.  Then, in 2013, she launched Portfolia, a platform that allows start-ups to raise money from the crowd, whether family, friends, or professional investors.  Different methods, same purpose.

Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff also displays a clear why:  make it easier to serve the customer.  CRM started as a simple-to-use, cloud-based (read:  low cost) sales data warehouse.   His “why” intact, but with a change in “how,” Benioff launched Chatter in 2010, a platform that supported collaboration within the enterprise – to better serve customers.  Then in 2013, he made a big gamble on a how.  He allocated 50% of his software development time to make Chatter the primary interface (analogous to the Twitter and Facebook activity streams) in Salesforce.

I’ve been grappling with this personally, as I have pursued two important goals for 2014: to run a marathon and to organize a conference on pursuing dreams.  Both goals spring from my “why”: I want to make it possible for individuals everywhere, including myself, to dream big and actually start taking steps toward realizing their dreams – especially the dreams that seem unattainable. Before last year’s Boston Marathon bombing, I didn’t consider myself an athlete or a runner. I haven’t yet secured a bib.  And, if I do, I will need to raise $7,500 for charity in order to get a spot.

And yet in some ways, this is a fairly comfortable “disruption” for me — I know how to raise money and just last weekend I ran 14.5 miles as part of my training. However, the investment of time needed to keep pursuing  this dream might just thwart my conference-organizing goal. The “how” of launching a conference is far more challenging and outside of my established skill-set.  The details are daunting, but with my vision of daring others to dream firmly before me, I am pressing forward, discovering my way one step at a time.

Once you know your greater purpose, there are lots of roads that will take you there. As Amar Bhide writes, 70% of all successful new businesses end up with a strategy different than the one they initially pursued. There are a gazillion methods and tactics, but there are very few whys.  When we have a vision and believe in it, instead of seeing drudgery, we see discovery. Instead of aimless wandering, we see ourselves at the low-end of our personal growth curve.  Once we know our why, there will be a how.

The Condensed January-February 2013 Magazine

Amy Bernstein, editor of HBR, offers executive summaries of the major features.

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The Right Network Can Make or Break Your Project

Does this airplane look familiar?

Source: Wikipedia

It should, because it’s a predecessor of the famous Stealth Bomber, a prototype completed by Jack Northrop’s company in 1948. In his time, Northrop — the inventor of the flying wing concept — was considered to be the aerospace genius, but he was not able to deliver on his promise to the U.S. military. The revolutionary airplane you never got beyond the prototype.

In 1980, Jack Northrop, then age 85 and confined to a wheelchair, visited a secure facility to see the first B-2 Stealth Bomber — the most advanced military aircraft capable of flying at extremely high altitudes and avoiding radar detection.

Source: Wikipedia

Even after 40 years of technological development and use of sophisticated computer design tools, the new bomber looked like a replica of Northrop’s original design for the flying wing. Reportedly, after seeing the aircraft, Northrop said he now realized why God had kept him alive for so long.

So why did one model fail and the other succeed?  Part of the explanation can be found by comparing the different networks of alliances that Northrop’s company formed in the forties and in the seventies.

In 1941, his alliance network looked small and simple hub-and-spoke system. Otis Elevators worked on design, General Manufacturing and Convair provided production facilities. Notice that the partners don’t work with one another and the U.S. Army Corps was actually brought in to arbitrate a dispute between Northrop and Convair.

In 1980, the alliance network was more complex and highly integrated.  Network partners worked with one another, jointly negotiating technical standards. Vought Aircraft designed and manufactured the intermediate sections of the wings, General Electric manufactured the engine, whereas Boeing handled fuel systems, weapons delivery and landing gear.   In addition, each main partner formed individual ties with other subcontractors specific to their areas of responsibility.

As we discuss in our new book “Network Advantage”, networks like this have two main benefits.  First, alliance partners are more likely to deliver on their promises.  If information flows freely among interconnected partners, how one firm treats a partner can be easily seen by other partners to whom both firms are connected. So if one firm bilks a partner, other partners will see that and will not collaborate with the bilking firm again.

Second, integrated networks facilitate fine-grained information exchanges because multiple partners have relationships where they share a common knowledge base. This shared expertise allows them to dive deep into solving complex problems related to executing or implementing a project.

This is not to say that the hub-and-spoke network of the 1940s doesn’t have its uses. In fact, they are usually more effective at coming up with radical innovation than are complex, integrated networks. In a hub-and-spoke configuration it’s more likely that your partners will know stuff you don’t already know and combining new, distinct ideas from multiple spokes leads to breakthrough innovations for the hub firm.

But Northrop’s hub and spoke portfolio was not useful in 1940s, because he already had an innovative blueprint for the bomber. All Northrop needed to do was to build reliable manufacturing systems that would execute his ideas based on incremental improvements made by multiple partners at the same time.  That scenario called for the integrated network of the 1970s.

The key to choosing between the two types of network is to ask: do you already have a final idea that needs to be implemented with incremental improvements? Is it important that all of your partners trust each other and share knowledge in implementing your idea? If so, then the integrated alliance portfolio is right for you. If you are exploring different options and it is not critical that your partners trust one another, work together to develop and/or implement them, then the hub and spoke portfolio is the best.

Can Groupon Save Its Business Model?

Not long ago, there was this multi-billion dollar company called Groupon that was going to revolutionize the business of bargains, whose founders turned down a $6 Billion offer from Google.  Yet the revolution never came.

To turn its fortunes around after a long period of performing below (admittedly inflated) expectations, Groupon changed a core element of its business model sometime last year.    The discounts available through Groupon coupons used to be subject to a host of restrictions, (e.g., “the deal is ON if at least 100 customers subscribe”), but now most Groupon coupons can be used any time, any day.

Will this change turn the company’s fortunes?  Actually, it could turn out to be the nail in Groupon’s coffin.  As we argue in a recent paper (and in this accompanying interview), behind Groupon’s spectacular rise and fall is a story of a business model that misaligned the incentives of Groupon and one of its key constituencies.

The sustainability of a business model depends on its ability to make all concerned parties better off.  In the case of Groupon’s discounts, customers certainly get value by enjoying deep discounts and Groupon does well the more its discounts get used.  A more interesting question is whether the merchants supplying the discounted goods and services also benefit: What do they get out of participating in a Groupon program?

Academic research has consistently found that running a deal using Groupon (or one of its competitors) has two main implications for a business: more customers in the short term but lower favorability ratings. Hence, short-term gains in traffic come at the expense of a lower future traffic and the overall value proposition to the merchant remains unclear.

Here is where restrictions come into the picture.  Nearly all service businesses face seasonal demand (think of restaurants, theaters, museums) and are often unable to serve all customers in peak periods (e.g., weekends).  Ideally, business owners want to restrict discounts to off-peak periods so that some demand shifts from peak to off-peak periods.  And if demand in off-peak periods is too low, they will want to close down the business on these days.

With unrestricted discounts (as is now typical for Groupon) customers with discounts will come in droves during peak times, and the profit of the merchant may even decline since regular customers are substituted with coupon-bearing customers. Think about it: filling a restaurant’s capacity on Saturday evening with Groupon customers is probably not the savviest business decision.

But by having discounts limited to low-demand periods the merchant can be sure that no full-price paying customer is replaced, and by having an activation threshold, the merchant can be sure that the deal is active only when demand is high enough in an off-peak period to justify the business staying open.  A win-win-win for all parties.

So why do most deals on Groupon and other similar web sites feature no time restrictions, and why are an increasing number of web portals removing activation thresholds? Because, unfortunately, what is in the interest of the business owner is not in the interests of Groupon and its competitors. Groupon and other web portals get a cut of total revenues channeled through the deal so Groupon gets nothing if the deal is not on.  That is, with no activation threshold and with deals active always, Groupon itself gets the best deal… And the merchant gets a raw one.

But a business model that imposes this kind of misalignment is not sustainable. Unless Groupon restores the restrictions, the prospects for its long-term survival are dim, as the bigger, better-known merchants themselves can fairly easily offer structured discounts directly.  Interestingly, there are signs that this might happen: time-restricted discounting has been reintroduced into Groupon Reserve.

This may seem like a backwards step.  But the hard truth is that without restrictions, Groupon is definitely dead, if not today, then tomorrow or at some point in the not too distant future. Of course, it may not survive without restrictions either because perhaps this was just a revolution that was never meant to be.

Research: Most Large Companies Can’t Maintain Their Revenue Streams

My research finds strong evidence that the majority of large companies do not successfully maintain their current revenue streams, let alone grow them over time. My “growth outliers” project looked at publicly traded firms with market capitalizations of greater than US 1 Billion as of 2009, using data from Capital IQ.  I found that in the period from 2000 to 2009, over half of the firms in the sample shrunk their revenue by 10% or more in at least one of those years, clear evidence of eroding competitive advantage.

In that same study, there is also striking evidence of the rise of global competition.  In the 2004 sample, roughly 20% of the firms came from emerging markets.  Just five years later, fully 38% of the sample was from emerging markets, with significant increases from companies based in South Korea, Israel, Brazil, Hong Kong and of course India and  China.  This trend has been underway for a while.  As the Economist observed in a 2005 article,

Years ago, when products did not change much and companies largely stuck to their knitting, American and European consumers faithfully bought cameras from Kodak, televisions from RCA and radios from Bush, because those brands represented a guarantee of quality. Then the Japanese got better at what they made. Now the South Koreans are doing the same. And yet with many American and European electronics companies making their gadgets in the same places, even sometimes the same factories, as their Asian competitors, the geography of production has become less important.

Other researchers have found similar patterns.  Richard Foster, an advisor to the consultancy Innosight, found that the lifespan of companies in the Standard and Poors 500 (an index chosen to represent the total economy) has been steadily shrinking for decades (Foster, 2012).  In 1960, a typical S&P company had been around for 60+ years.  By 2010, the typical S&P company was 16 or 17 years old.  Further, the index is extremely dynamic.  According to Foster’s research, a new firm is added and an existing one removed roughly every two weeks!  Thus firms such as Express Scripts, Juniper Networks and Google enter the index while firms such as Sears, The New York Times and Radio Shack exit it.

Students Get Lower Grades in Online Courses

Although students who take online courses in community colleges tend to be better prepared and more motivated than their classmates, a study by Di Xu and Shanna Smith Jaggars of Columbia University shows that the online format has a significant negative impact on students’ persistence in sticking with courses and on their course grades. For the typical student, taking a course online rather than in person would decrease his or her likelihood of course persistence by 7 percentage points, and if the student continued to the end of the course, would lower his or her final grade by more than 0.3 points on a 4-point scale. Before expanding online courses, colleges need to improve students’ time-management and independent-learning skills, the researchers say.

If You Want to Change, Don’t Read This

There is a great scene in Godfather 2 where Kay (Diane Keaton) complains to husband Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) about his unfulfilled promise to make his business fully legit and quit being a mafioso. Michael responds that he is still working on it, reassuring Kay emphatically: “I’ll change, I’ll change — I’ve learned that I have the strength to change.”

Although most of us aren’t part of the mafia, we are still a bit like Michael Corleone in that we overestimate our capacity for change. In theory everyone can change, but in practice most people don’t… except for some well-documented changes that affect most of us.

For example, most people display antisocial tendencies during adolescence and slower thinking in late adulthood, but these changes are by no means indicative of a psychological metamorphosis. Rather, they are akin to common lifespan changes in physical traits, such as gains or drops in height during childhood and late adulthood, respectively — they occur to everyone. Likewise, there are typical changes in personality, even within 5-year periods. A seminal review showed that we become more prudent, emotionally stable, and assertive with age, while our energy and intellectual curiosity dwindle after adolescence. In other words, as we grow older we become more calm and mature, but also more passive and narrow-minded.

A more interesting question is whether categorical changes are feasible. Can someone be extremely introverted at certain age, but super outgoing at another? Can someone transition from being a self-centred narcissist to being a caring and giving soul? Or from being exceptionally smart to being incredibly stupid?

On the one hand, there is no shortage of famous case studies to illustrate radical transformations in people’s reputation (their public persona). Sometimes these changes — like Miley Cyrus’s transformation from innocent Disney star to tongue-wielding twerker — seem more like carefully planned PR campaigns than true psychological journeys. But others do make us wonder if there’s something deeper going on inside. Bill Gates started as a stereotypical computer nerd, then turned into a talented entrepreneur, then morphed into a ruthless empire-builder, and then became the most charitable person on earth, giving away most of his — and his friends’ — wealth. The late Nelson Mandela, perhaps the least disputed moral figure of our times, had an arrogant, aggressive, and antisocial youth before inspiring everyone with his path of nonviolent resistance.

And yet scientific studies indicate that categorical changes in character are unusual. When there is change, it usually represents an amplification of our character. In other words, even when our patterns of change are unique, they are predictable: we simply become a more exaggerated version of ourselves. This happens in three different ways. First, we tend to interpret events according to our own personal biases, which only reinforces those biases. For instance, pessimists perceive ambivalent feedback as criticism, which, in turn, enhances their pessimism over time; the opposite happens with optimists. Second, we gravitate towards environments that are congruent with our own default attitudes and values. Hedonists seek pleasure and fun-loving people, which, in turn, makes them even more hedonistic. Aggressive people crave conflict and combat, which only augments their aggression. Altruists hang out with caring people and spend time helping others, which enhances their empathy and reinforces their selflessness. Third, our reputation does truly precede us: others (including strangers and acquaintances) make unconscious inferences about our character in order to explain our behavior and predict what we may do next. These intuitive evaluations may be inaccurate, but they are still self-fulfilling. With time, we morph into the person others think we are; their prejudiced and fantasized representation of us turns real and becomes ingrained in our identity. Reputation really is fate.

As a consequence, deliberate attempts to change are far less effective than we like to think, which is why most New Year’s resolutions are never accomplished — and why our long-term happiness levels are fairly constant and relatively immune to extreme life events (whether it is a painful divorce or the joys of winning the lottery).

Needless to say, some people are more capable of changing than others. Ironically, those individuals tend to be more pessimistic about their very chances of changing. Indeed, neurotic, introverted and insecure people are more likely to change, whereas highly adjusted and resilient individuals are less changeable. Likewise, optimism breeds overconfidence and hinders change by perpetuating false hopes and unrealistic expectations.

So, how can we change? The recipe for self-change is fairly straightforward — it is just hard to implement. In order to change, we need to start by building self-awareness, which is best achieved by obtaining (and believing) honest and critical feedback from others. Next, we must come up with a realistic strategy that focuses on attainable goals, such as changing a few specific behaviors (e.g., more eye contact, less shouting, more smiling, etc.) rather than substantial aspects of our personality (e.g., interpersonal sensitivity, empathy, and sociability). Finally, we will need an enormous amount of effort and dedication in order to both attain and maintain any desired changes — or we will quickly revert to our old habits. In short, change requires self-critical insight, humble goals, and indefatigable persistence. It means going against our nature and demands extraordinary levels of willpower.

So think carefully before you promise to change. And if you have tried to change and failed — well, you’ve got lots of company.

Conflict Strategies for Nice People

Do you value friendly relations with your colleagues? Are you proud of being a nice person who would never pick a fight?  Unfortunately, you might be just as responsible for group dysfunction as your more combative team members. That’s because it’s a problem when you shy away from open, healthy conflict about the issues. If you think you’re “taking one for the team” by not rocking the boat, you’re deluding yourself.

Teams need conflict to function effectively.  Conflict allows the team to come to terms with difficult situations, to synthesize diverse perspectives, and to make sure solutions are well thought-out.  Conflict is uncomfortable, but it is the source of true innovation and also a critical process in identifying and mitigating risks.

Still, I meet people every day who admit that they aren’t comfortable with conflict.  They worry that disagreeing might hurt someone’s feelings or disrupt harmonious team dynamics. They fret that their perspective isn’t as valid as someone else’s, so they hold back.

Sure, pulling your punches might help you maintain your self-image as a nice person, but you do so at the cost of getting your alternative perspective on the table; at the cost of challenging faulty assumptions; and at the cost of highlighting hidden risks.  That’s a high cost to pay for nice.

To overcome these problems, we need a new definition of nice. In this version of nice, you surface your differences of opinion, you discuss the uncomfortable issues, and you put things on the table where they can help your team move forward.

The secret of having healthy conflict and maintaining your self-image as a nice person is all in the mindset and the delivery.

To start shifting your mindset, think about your value to the team not in how often you agree, but in how often you add unique value.  If all you’re doing is agreeing with your teammates, you’re redundant.  So start by telling yourself “it’s my obligation to bring a different perspective than what others are bringing.” Grade yourself on how much value you bring on a topic.

Here are a few tips on improving your delivery:

1. Use “and,” not “but.” When you need to disagree with someone, express your contrary opinion as an “and.” It’s not necessary for someone else to be wrong for you to be right.  When you are surprised to hear something a teammate has said, don’t try to trump it, just add your reality. “You think we need to leave room in the budget for a customer event and I’m concerned that we need that money for employee training. What are our options?”   This will engage your teammates in problem solving, which is inherently collaborative instead of combative.

2. Use hypotheticals. When someone disagrees with you, don’t take them head on—being contradicted doesn’t feel very good.  Instead, a useful tactic is to ask about hypothetical situations and to get them imagining. (Imagining is the opposite of defending, so it gets the brain out of a rut.) If you are meeting resistance to your ideas, try asking your teammates to imagine a different scenario. “I hear your concern about getting the right sales people to pull off this campaign. If we could get the right people…what could the campaign look like?

3. Ask about the impact. Directing open-ended questions at your teammate is also useful.  If you are concerned about a proposed course of action, ask your teammates to think through the impact of implementing their plan. “Ok, we’re contemplating launching this product to only our U.S. customers. How is that going to land with our two big customers in Latin America?”  This approach feels much less aggressive than saying “Our Latin American customers will be angry.”  Anytime you can demonstrate that you’re open to ideas and curious about the right approach, it will open up the discussion (and you’ll preserve your reputation as a nice person).

4. Discuss the underlying issue. Many conflicts on a team spiral out of control because the parties involved aren’t on the same page.  If you disagree with a proposed course of action, instead of complaining about the solution, start by trying to understand what’s behind the suggestion. If you understand the reasoning, you might be able to find another way to accomplish the same goal. “I’m surprised you suggested we release the sales figures to the whole team. What is your goal in doing that?” Often conflict arises when one person tries to solve a problem without giving sufficient thought to the options or the impact of those actions.  If you agree that the problem they are trying to solve is important, you will have common ground from which to start sleuthing toward answers.

5. Ask for help. Another tactic for “nice conflict” is to be mildly self-deprecating and to own the misunderstanding.  If something is really surprising to you (e.g., you can’t believe anyone would propose anything so crazy), say so.  “I’m missing something here. Tell me how this will address our sales gap for Q1.” If the person’s idea really doesn’t hold water, a series of genuine, open questions that come from a position of helping you understand will likely provide other teammates with the chance to help steer the plan in a different direction.

Conflict — presenting a different point of view even when it is uncomfortable — is critical to team effectiveness. Diversity of thinking on a team is the source of innovation and growth. It is also the path to identifying and mitigating risks. If you find yourself shying away from conflict, use one of these techniques to make it a little easier.

The alternative is withholding your concerns, taking them up outside of the team, and slowly eroding trust and credibility.  That’s not nice at all.