<story><title>Decision Disagreement Framework</title><url>https://matterapp.com/blog/decision-disagreement-framework-how-we-encourage-disagreements-at-matter/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>deathanatos</author><text>I honestly can&amp;#x27;t figure out how to apply this to the real-life disagreement I had today.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Will the decision slow down, harm, or break the business?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That depends on who&amp;#x27;s view you go with? In &lt;i&gt;my&lt;/i&gt; opinion, my choice will not &amp;quot;slow down, hard, or break the business&amp;quot;. But the person I was arguing with felt that my choice &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt;, and had an alternative choice he wanted to make. And of course, he felt that his choice did not &amp;quot;slow down, hard, or break the business&amp;quot; and that mine did. We can&amp;#x27;t even agree on whether to use the framework!&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one defaults to &amp;quot;just do it&amp;quot;. Further, what do you do when you coworker refuses to put forward a rationale for their choice? In my example from today, he had an opinion&amp;#x2F;action he wanted us as a company to take, but could not provide a decent rationale to it. To paraphrase, it was &amp;quot;we should change X to better support my workflow&amp;quot;; my counter argument was that changing X was counterproductive to and basically eliminated goal Y, which we had just received a (reasonable) mandate from on high to accomplish. Further, his own workflow would be hampered by X, and a simple change to his own workflow would better accomplish his own goals while allowing us to maintain goal Y. He literally refused to respond to that position, but still wants us to do X.&lt;p&gt;Assuming your coworkers are rational is a terrible idea in my experience. Unfortunately, IDK what else one can do, and IME rational arguments are ignored and bad decisions are made and people start looking for escape hatches.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps we have bigger problems.</text></comment>
<story><title>Decision Disagreement Framework</title><url>https://matterapp.com/blog/decision-disagreement-framework-how-we-encourage-disagreements-at-matter/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>whiddershins</author><text>“First, acknowledge the disagreement and paraphrase the opinion of the person disagreeing to make sure ...”&lt;p&gt;YOU understand their position.&lt;p&gt;This is a fundamental mistake in this process that happens at the beginning and everything that follows is made worse because of it.&lt;p&gt;You don’t rephrase a person’s position to make them “feel heard.” What’s important is to get to the meat of why they hold that position, in case you are disagreeing with a misapprehension of their position, or you are disagreeing with a solution because you didn’t really understand the underlying problem a person is trying to address.&lt;p&gt;Often the real disagreement is a layer or more below the area where conflict is manifesting. It more often is a result of information asymmetry or a difference in priorities or perception of reality by the stakeholders.&lt;p&gt;This is the single most important part of engaging in productive disagreement, and without it much time is wasted, resentments are formed, non optimal solutions are generated, and disagreements resurface repeatedly but transformed such that they appear as new disagreements.</text></comment>