When Your Peer Group Disagrees: What to Do With Conflicting Advice

This page covers disagreement inside one group, during a meeting and after it. Advice that conflicts between two separate memberships is a different problem, and can a founder belong to more than one peer group? deals with it.

Why do members of one group split?

Members can hear the same account and reach different conclusions. Each brings experience from a different company, and each may read your priorities differently, particularly when the business has an opportunity you are unsure you want.

The useful question is what makes each recommendation sensible to the person offering it. A disagreement about an uncertain fact calls for evidence. A difference in appetite for risk may remain after everyone understands the facts. Know which one you are dealing with before you ask for another round of advice.

The quoted lines in the table are hypothetical.

Several causes can apply at once. Start with the difference that could change what you do. A disagreement that has no bearing on your action can stay unresolved.

Should the majority decide?

No. In a hypothetical group of seven, a four to three split tells you how those seven people responded. By itself it says nothing about which recommendation fits your company, and a different mix of experience could have produced a different count.

A member who has faced the specific constraint you described may offer better evidence than several members whose advice rests on a general preference. Ask what makes that experience comparable. Success in a different business does not establish that the same action will work in yours.

Give weight to relevant evidence and to reasoning you can examine. Confidence is easy to mistake for expertise when you are anxious about a decision, so ask the forceful member the questions you would ask someone who sounds less sure.

Quick agreement deserves a look as well. If everyone agrees at once, check how you presented the issue. Did you describe a decision you had not made, or give a persuasive account of the choice you already preferred? A constraint left out of the account makes agreement easy.

What should you ask before the meeting ends?

Go back to the decision statement. Before a meeting I work with the presenting member on a clear statement of the decision in front of them and the assumption they want the group to test. When the advice splits, that statement is what the member returns to.

Read the decision back and ask whether everyone has been answering it. If the discussion has turned up a different decision, name the new one. Otherwise members spend the rest of the session defending answers to a question you no longer need answered.

Then use questions that bring the reasoning out:

• What would have to be true for your recommendation to be right for this company?
• What have you seen that I have not accounted for?
• What information would change your mind?
• Which part of my account are you relying on most?

Let the answers finish before you defend your preferred option. Correct a factual misunderstanding while the members are still together, and ask whether the correction changes anyone's view.

During the meeting I go back to questions a member has not answered. A split makes it tempting to slide past an uncomfortable question by discussing everyone else's opinions. When the unanswered question is about your own willingness to act, more advice will not answer it.

How do you work through the advice afterward?

Write each distinct position in one line, followed by the assumption it depends on. Two members may give the same recommendation for different reasons, so keep those apart. "Expand because demand is proven" and "expand because waiting will lose the opportunity" are the same advice resting on different evidence.

Next, separate the assumptions you can check before your decision date from the ones that will stay uncertain. Start with the check most likely to change your choice. Your own delivery records may settle a capacity question in an afternoon. A guess about how a competitor will respond will still be a guess after another week of discussion.

Where the question is a fact outside your expertise, write it down for the right adviser. A peer's experience is good for finding the question. Your attorney, CPA or lender establishes the answer for your business.

Give the checks a deadline, and decide now what you will do if the information is not available by then. That might mean postponing a dependent commitment with a stated reason and a new date. The decision should stay on your calendar.

Once the assumption that matters is checked, go back over the recommendations. Some will no longer fit. Others will still be reasonable because the uncertainty cannot be removed before you act. Write down which uncertainty you are accepting.

How much evidence does the decision need?

Ask what it would take to reverse the action. If a limited trial lets you learn before a wider commitment, define what the trial tests and what result would justify continuing. Calling something a trial when you already intend to continue whatever happens only delays the conversation with the group.

For a decision that is hard to reverse, spend more of your effort on the downside before committing, and include the demands on your own time. A company can sometimes fund an action its founder cannot sustain. Set the decision date by the business constraint, too. The next meeting may be too late, and waiting has consequences of its own that belong in the reasoning.

What belongs in the private one-to-one?

I meet each member privately between meetings, and a topic moves between that conversation and the group only with the member's consent. A split is a good use of that hour. You may understand both recommendations and still be reluctant to disappoint a member you respect, or the unresolved part may be your own capacity, which you would rather examine without an audience.

Bring the recommendation you find hardest to assess, say what is still unresolved for you, and keep your decision date in view. If what you want after rejecting advice is reassurance, say so. That is worth looking at directly, especially when you already have enough information to choose.

Can you decide against most of the group?

Yes. You carry the consequences of a decision about your company, and the group cannot carry them for you. I have taught for years that the first responsibility of anyone in this seat is to help someone make a great decision. The decision itself stays with the founder. A majority recommendation is a reason to examine your thinking carefully, and it does not oblige you to adopt it.

Write the strongest objection to your choice in terms its supporters would recognize. If you can only describe their view as too cautious or too aggressive, you have probably not understood it yet. Return to the assumption they believe you are getting wrong.

Then record why you are going ahead: the evidence you relied on, or the risk you chose to accept. Set a review date and write down what result would show the group's concern was justified. Do it before you know the outcome, while you can still tell your original reasoning from a later explanation.

A founder can also decide against the group badly. Dismissing advice because being challenged is uncomfortable leaves the underlying question where it was. Having the right to decide says nothing about whether the reasoning is sound.

What should you tell the group next time?

Report the decision, especially when you went against most members. Explain your reason, describe what has happened so far, and say what result you are watching for and when you will review it. If it is too early to judge, say what is still unknown.

In my groups, what a member said they would do is the first item at the next meeting, a point made in do CEO peer groups work? I also follow up before the next meeting, and when an action has not happened, the work is finding out what stopped it.

A group cannot follow up on a decision it never hears about. If you changed course between meetings, explain what changed. If you did nothing, say so, and do not present the original discussion as progress.

Keep the update inside the group's confidentiality rules. Reporting your own action gives you no permission to repeat another member's circumstances outside the group, and any notes you kept of the discussion deserve the same care. How those rules work is covered in how confidentiality works inside a peer board.

When does disagreement become a reason not to decide?

Look at what has changed since the last discussion. If you come back with the same facts because the group could not agree, say what you still need before you can decide.

Ask what further agreement would let you do. If you are waiting for everyone to approve, you have made consensus a condition of acting, and the members may never share your appetite for the risk, even once they understand your reasoning.

A delay is justified by a missing fact that would change the decision. Name that fact and who will get it. If no further check would change your choice, the question becomes what is stopping you from making it. If the issue does need another discussion, report what you checked since the split and what still prevents a decision.

Not sure which decision to bring to a group in the first place? Ten minutes on the Leadership Scorecard shows where the pressure sits in your company and in your own week.