I really like smart, polite people who mean well. I've heard the phrase from a number of smart polite people that they believe in the phrase, "strong views (or opinions), weakly held." When I first heard that I nodded in agreement and considered its wisdom. It implies a willingness to cooperate, to not be blinded by your own beliefs to the detriment of progress. And I'm sure it works in certain groups---collaborators working on improving the status quo--in certain situations. And yet it can sound like "yeah I have a strong opinion about this, but I don't really care that much about the outcome." There's another group of people--a smaller group, I'd bet. These people have strong opinions, strongly held. Steve Jobs didn't hold his strong opinions weakly. Nor did MLK. Nor did Sara Blakely, the now-billionaire founder of Spanx. Nor did John Lennon, or Basquiat, or Miles Davis. Weakly held opinions lead to weak outcomes, the
Charlie Crystle writes about startups, startup ecosystems, tech, food systems, and random things.