Challenge network
A named group whose job is to attack your work, not encourage it
Recruit a handful of people to find the holes in your thinking, kept apart from the friends and mentors whose instinct is to say the work is good. The ask is explicit. Read the draft, watch the rehearsal, argue with the logic, and do not soften any of it. You tell them plainly that this is why you picked them. That stops the criticism arriving pre-wrapped in praise. Credit for the idea usually goes to firms that built blunt internal feedback into how they run. Discomfort is the cost. People who keep one describe it as the price of catching a weak argument before an audience finds it.
People on record
Sorted by strength of stance
Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Adam GrantDoes it
Organizational psychologist · Think Again
People whose job is to tear his logic apart. Years before he had a name for it he was already doing this, and he formalized the practice after watching Bridgewater run it at company scale. Students see book chapters first and compete over who lands the most devastating criticism. He says he is not always as receptive as he would like to be, and keeps going back anyway.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #399 transcript“But I think a great member of a challenge network, I’ll tell you about mine, is somebody who pushes you because they believe in you. And they’re not going to settle for half-baked ideas or for something that’s not your very best work.”
The Tim Ferriss Show #399 transcript (opens in a new tab) · 20 Dec 2019
Aimed at the same thing
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