Every organization, for better or for worse, has a culture. Boards define themselves by how they interpret the organization’s mission; staffs are defined by how, and how well, they interpret the decisions that emerge from those interpretations. And at every step, they run the risk that the culture will get a little stale—places where people say things like, "This is how you’re supposed to do it." Or that long-lamented phrase in associations: "That's how we’ve always done it."
Would it help to have somebody around whose actual job it is to push back against that kind of talk? At the Sloan MIT Management Review, a group of leadership scholars discuss the positive impact of a “critical reviewer,” an in-house devil’s advocate who is there to question the organization’s assumptions and internal behaviors.
As they put it: “The critical reviewer is an individual tasked with challenging prevailing assumptions and ensuring that ideas are evaluated thoroughly. Rather than accepting what’s presented at face value, the critical reviewer encourages the team to consider alternatives, think through risks, and ask whether all relevant factors have been considered.”
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