Had about 120 people yesterday – and was thrilled to see some familiar faces. It’s always good to speak at Microsoft: the audience is always smart and likes to laugh. Here’s some of the good Q&A, from memory, from my talk on why smart people defend bad ideas:

What do you do if your boss is an idiot? Sadly, not much. If they really have some kind of cognitive disability nothing you can do can change that. But you can always look for points of leverage. Who are the smart people who work for your boss that have your bosses ear? How do they influence him? What issues is he smarter about that others and how do you play to his strengths but work independently on areas he’s weak on? And lastly, there are worse thngs than being stupid. Traits like trust, clarity, commitment and leadership skill are mostly orthogonal to intellect. A slow person who listens to the right people might make a better manager than bright person who ignores everyone.

How do you handle a manager that has difficultly making priority decisions? . Take on the burden of setting the plate for them. What can you do to make priority decision easier? This is a very generous form of managing up: where you define for your boss what you need from them to succeed. In this case, you’re going further and doing some of their work for them in order to make your work possible. If that burden is too large, look for other people who work for your manager who suffer as much as you do. You can partner up and set the table together. Also, know that prioritization is the single most important things managers of large teams do. If your manager isn’t doing it well, be worried.

What do you do in a group that doesn’t like to debate ideas? Some people have stigmas about debate: they don’t allow criticism or critique in fear of people feeling hurt. This usually sucks and represents fear of ideas an inability to seperate someone’s ideas from their identity: a death knell for creative thinking. However, in all groups, ideas are debated, just not out in the open. If debates are verbotten in meetings, look to the offices and cubicles. Bring your ideas to people one on one and invite people to come to you.

Why are copouts like ‘We don’t have time’ and ‘This is the way we did it last time? The audience and I discussed many reasons why these statements are problematic: They’re copouts and don’t represent thinking, they put decisions into unquestionable boxes, they imply a we vs. you dynamic which can bully question askers into submission. We agreed that heuristics like these are often right, and are fast to use, but also agreed that there must be a way to over-ride them and force real thinking to take place.

If you were there (or not) and had other questions, glad to answer ’em here.