Wednesday, June 14, 2017

How the 10th man came to be

This is an interesting excerpt from the book “Why Dissent Matters.” It talks about “The Tenth Man” who was developed as a sort of devil’s advocate in military intelligence after Israel was caught off-guard by the Yom Kippur War.


If there are 10 people in a room and nine agree, the role of the tenth is to disagree and point out flaws in whatever decision the group has reached. Seems like this could be adapted for political and business models as well.
Killing the messenger is self-defeating. AMAN, the Israeli forces’ directorate of military intelligence, had to change the way it did business, and in the aftermath of the Agranat Commission it created two new tools: the position of the Tenth Man, also referred to as the Revision Department, and the option of writing “different opinion” memos.
The review is here. The book is: Why Dissent Matters: Because Some People See Things the Rest of Us Miss by William Kaplan (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

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