This week, I kicked off Tim Harford’s new book “Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure” and I haven’t been able to put it down. Tim, the “Undercover Economist,” is the Financial Times economics blogger. The book’s core message, the need for vast and constant experimentation to solve complex problems holds important lessons for economists, government, business, and yes, even public relations.

Harford outlines “three essential steps… to try new things, in the expectation that some will fail: to make failure survivable, because it will be common; and to make sure that you know when you’ve failed.”

Unfortunately, most of leaders are allergic to accepting experimentation because it requires an acceptance of error, and with it, accountability. (Also, as Tim astutely points out, votes and bonuses seem to gravitate to those who show the “courage” to push grandiose projects.)

The acceptance of error and the need for experimentation however, are the two aspects I want to focus on today. Few are willing to push through initiatives that have a chance of failing so leaders seek out alternatives that either incorporate everything (comprehensive strategies) or seek out confirmation of their own biases by surrounding themselves with” yes-men.”

All of us, especially those of us in PR, are susceptible to becoming “yes men.”. The fact is, group think is a powerful drug. The ambitious are the most vulnerable, because advancement can be incredibly difficult for the lone dissenter. It’s safer to go along and find other ways to make yourself stand out.

We’ve all been in that position at one point or another. Who hasn’t sat around a PR/marketing/advancement strategy session and second-guessed themselves when they seem to be the only ones with a differing opinion?

Yet, dissent is essential to finding a workable solution because it promotes multiple avenues to success and hopefully, to the experimentation of various strategies.

While few of us will ever take part in a decision with such wide-reaching as the Bay of Pigs, we face these types of communications decisions for our university, start-up or business every day. And when we’re in the board room, it’s our responsibility to offer honest feedback regardless of what our colleagues say. Just one differing vote or idea is enough to break a cycle, as the Asch conformity experiments in the 1950s proved.

This means we have to have faith in our own judgment, our own expertise, and be willing to risk being wrong because that’s the only way we’ll eventually figure out what it takes to be right. And speaking up maybe all that’s is needed to convince others to do the same and all that is necessary to prevent a larger problem down the road.

We owe it not only to ourselves, but our organization.

@MikeLesczinski

#HigherEdPR