Why you should own your opinions

I know you can’t tell from the looks of it, but I’ve been hanging around here a lot lately, working on a post that wants to turn info a book of its own. I’m making good progress getting it tamed into a reasonable length. But first, inspired by LinkedIn posts from James Bach and from Jon Bach and subsequent comments, I want to explore another idea rattling around in my head.

I’m going to talk about three examples where members of a community were accused of groupthink of some sort. In many cases, some people observing the communities say that they see cult-like behavior. I’d prefer not to use the derogatory term “cult” here for a couple of reasons. One, because cult leaders actively encourage groupthink and blind obedience, and I don’t see that happening in these cases (even if their followers are picking up some of these traits). And also, because real cults have done a lot of damage, such as permanently ripping families apart. Let’s not try to equivocate that with what I’m talking about here.

Example 1: I learned a lot from the author and consultant Jerry (Gerald) Weinberg. I am of his followers. People outside his circle often don’t understand the level of devotion that many of his followers exhibited during his life and afterward. Someone even coined a term for it: “Weinborg”, which many of us have adopted for ourselves. (If you don’t get the reference, look up the fictional “Borg” in the Star Trek universe – we have been assimilated).

I attended three of Jerry’s week-long workshops. Every time I’ve been through an intense experiential training, it has been a deeply moving experience. That’s true of Jerry’s workshops, plus other experiential trainings I’ve attended (several Boy Scout training sessions come to mind, for example). Once you’ve recovered, you want more. But you can’t effectively explain why it was so moving to someone who wasn’t there, in fact, for many of them, you can’t give away too many of the details, or you may ruin the experience for someone who attends later.

There are likely many other behaviors among Jerry’s followers that looked odd to outsiders. Perhaps we would invoke his laws by name, like “Rudy’s Rutabaga Rule”. Or we might reference “egoless programming” and point to the book where Jerry wrote about it. We might get ourselves into trouble, though, if we recommended that people follow his ideas without being able to explain them ourselves. “Go read his book” isn’t very persuasive if we can’t give the elevator speech ourselves to show the value in an idea.

Early in my career, a wise leader cautioned me to build opinions of my own rather than constantly quoting the experts. That has been a guiding principle for me ever since, and one that I hope has steered me away from groupthink.

Example 2: James Bach is a consultant and trainer who has influenced a lot of people in the software testing community, along with his business partner. I have learned a lot from James, and I continue to check in with him periodically, though I have never chosen to join his community of close followers. Incidentally, he has also been influenced by Jerry Weinberg.

James has grown a community of people who agree on some common terminology, which streamlines their discussions. It gets interesting, though, when someone uses that terminology outside that community without explaining what it means to them. I remember attending a software quality meetup that advertised nothing indicating that it was associated with James Bach or his courses. But then I heard the organizers and some attendees use terminology that I recognized as originating from James. It’s been several years since the meetings I attended, but I think I remember them presenting other ideas that closely align with what James teaches, not always identifying where they came from or why they recommended them. I vaguely remember that I stood up once or twice and told them that I hadn’t accepted some of those ideas, and I don’t recall the discussion going very far.

If a group has an ideology that they expect participants to adopt as a prerequisite for participating, that’s fine, but it needs to be explicit. Otherwise, they need to be prepared to define their terms and defend their ideas.

Example 3: I participate in the “One of the Three” Slack forum and often listen to its associated podcast created by Brent Jensen and Alan Page. They have spoken out about James Bach and his community a few times. At one point, some participants piled on to some negative comments that seemed to have no basis other than “because Alan and Brent said so.” I called them out for groupthink, not unlike the very thing they were complaining about. Fortunately, I think they got the message.

I remember talking about the “luminary effect” with author and consultant Boris Beizer years ago. This is where people hesitate to challenge an expert, especially a recognized luminary in their field, because of their perceived authority on a topic. But in fact, all of the experts I’ve mentioned love for you to give them your well-reasoned challenges to any of their ideas. Granted, the more they love a debate, the more exhausting and intimidating it can be to engage with them. There are smart, after all, and you need to do your homework so you can competently defend your ideas – that’s not asking too much, right? In fact, one of the best ways to get their respect is to challenge them with a good argument. I just hope that a few of my ideas here will survive their scrutiny.

In this post I’m talking about some controversial people and some controversial topics. Where I’ve stayed neutral here, I’ve done so very deliberately, and though I have some further opinions unrelated to the topics I’m discussing, I’m not going to muddy this post with them.

Further reading – Beware Cults of Testing by Jason Arbon.