Principle 3

When individuals, workplaces, or governments introduce some practice or policy, they are seldom concerned about whether their opponents will endorse this decision.  For example, if a leader introduces a tax on sugar, a committee to monitor universities, or a regulation to limit gambling, this person will not often consider whether future leaders, who espouse opposing ideologies, will retain these changes.  At least two reasons explain our disinclination to consider the perspectives of opponents. 

• First, people tend to underestimate the degree to which the perspective of opponents are useful, insightful, or moral; individuals tend to inflate the extent to which the suggestions of opponents are misguided or unethical.
• Second, people tend to overestimate the likelihood the policies or practices they implement will persist.  That is, changes do not tend to endure as long as people anticipate.

Yet, if leaders attempt to implement policies or practices that opponents are likely to adopt, rather than reverse, these approaches are likely to be innovative and effective.  That is, to develop policies or practices that opponents will endorse, individuals often need to reconcile conflicting perspectives.  This attempt to reconcile conflicting perspectives generally improves creativity and innovation.  Likewise, policies or practices that opponents will endorse will tend to endure over time.  Consequently,

• individuals are more likely to invest in policies or practices they believe will endure,
• these policies or practices are thus more likely to evolve and to improve incrementally over time and become increasingly useful.

Organisations and governments can introduce a range of practices to apply this principle.  To illustrate, councils and governments are often inundated with submissions and proposals on how to improve a community or region.  To decide which submissions or proposals to prioritise,

• councils and governments can utilise existing AI tools to assess the integrative complexity of these submissions—a measure that reveals the degree to which these proposals recognise and reconcile multiple perspectives,
• councils and governments should then prioritise the submissions that are high in integrative complexity, because these proposals are not as likely to be reversed by opponents in the future.

In short, leaders should attempt to modify the approaches they initiate to increase the likelihood that opponents will retain, rather than reverse, these practices.