When “Disagree and Commit” Starts Feeling Like You’re Jack Harper in Oblivion

Picture this: you’re cruising around a half-ruined Earth in your little bubble ship, doing your job, fixing drones, reciting the company script like a good Tech-49… and then one day you pull a random book out of the rubble, start asking questions, and realize the mission you’ve been selling everyone on might be total bullshit.

Okay, maybe startup leadership isn’t quite that dystopian. But tell me this doesn’t feel familiar:

Your founder/CEO/Visionary-in-Chief makes a big call. You argued hard against it. They still go for it. Now you have to fly back to your team, put on the sleek white jumpsuit of enthusiasm, and convince a bunch of smart people that yes, this is definitely the right tower to beam our signal to, no we’re absolutely not the bad guys, everything is awesome.

Except inside your helmet you’re screaming, “Are we the baddies?!”

That, my friend, is the moment “disagree and commit” starts tasting like recycled spaceship air. Noble in theory. Soul-crushing in the mid-sized startup trenches.

So here’s a slightly less dramatic alternative I’ve been using instead:

“Disagree and let’s see.”

It’s the leadership equivalent of Jack Harper saying, “Okay, fine, we’ll keep servicing the drones… but I’m definitely keeping an eye on whether these ‘alien invaders’ are actually the aliens.” Same forward momentum. Way less pretending.

Why most decisions are basically sci-fi anyway

In Oblivion, everyone acts like the Tet has perfect information and the One True Plan. In startups, we do the same thing: we treat decisions like the founder pulled the One True Answer out of a glowing orb. In reality? We’re all just making educated guesses with 40% of the data while the world explodes around us.

“Disagree and let’s see” simply admits what we already know: every big call is an experiment wearing a business plan costume. No one—not the CEO, not the board, not the Series C investors cosplaying as oracles—actually knows if this is going to work. We’re just hoping the drones don’t turn on us.

How to run the experiment without looking like you’re rooting for human extinction

1. Write a real hypothesis together Sit down with the founder and agree on what we’re actually testing. “If we launch the new pricing tier, we believe X will happen because Y.” You don’t have to love it. You just have to agree on the question.

2. Pick the observation posts Decide what numbers, customer reactions, or smoke signals will tell us if we’re winning or if the Tet is about to harvest our organs. Put dates on the calendar. Real ones. Not “someday when vibes feel right.”

3. Commit to learning, not to being right The goal isn’t to prove you were the prophetic one. The goal is to figure out what’s actually true before the planet runs out of water.

Then you walk into your team and say—instead of the forced smile and corporate jargon—“Look, this wasn’t my first choice. But here’s the bet we’re running, here’s what success looks like, and here’s when we’ll know. Let’s go collect some data.”

It’s amazing how fast people relax when you stop asking them to salute a decision and start inviting them to help solve a mystery.

How to do this without secretly hoping the drones murder everyone

Humans can smell subtext from orbit. If you’re low-key praying for failure so you can whisper “I told you so” while sipping reclaimed water, your team will feel it.

Fixes that actually work:

• Be honest, but boringly professional: “This wasn’t my recommendation, but we’re moving forward and here’s what we’re measuring.”

• Roll up your sleeves and help make the experiment rigorous. People trust leaders who act aligned even when they didn’t pick the path.

• If it works, say the words out loud: “I was wrong about this one—nice call.” (Trust skyrockets.)

• If it crashes and burns, resist the eye twitch. Just: “Here’s what we learned. Onward.”

Why this feels less like acting in a Tom Cruise vehicle

Having to sell a decision you don’t believe in is slow-acting poison for your integrity. “Disagree and let’s see” lets you stay honest without turning into a corporate drone (literally).

Your team stops expecting you to be a cheerleader for ideas you fought against. Instead they expect clarity, curiosity, and the occasional “Huh, guess the invaders were us all along.”

And when the next big disagreement shows up—because it will—you’ve already built the muscle for handling it without anyone having to fake enthusiasm or swallow doubt.

The bigger plot twist

The real enemy was never disagreement. The real enemy is certainty.

Start treating decisions like experiments, let leaders admit uncertainty without losing authority, and suddenly your company learns at warp speed. People trust faster. Politics shrink. You spend less time reciting the mission script and more time figuring out what’s actually true.

In the end, maybe we’re all just clones trying to remember who we really are.

But at least we can do it honestly.

Quick reflection (no Harper family reunion required)

Think of the last time you had to champion something you secretly thought was a terrible idea. What would have changed if you could have framed it as “Let’s run the experiment and find out” instead of “Effective, immediate compliance is required”?

And hey—if this resonates, forward it to the one person on your team who’s been giving you the side-eye during All-Hands. They’ll know why.

Thanks for reading. If you’re into this kind of mildly heretical leadership thinking, subscribe—I send these out when I have something worth saying, not on some content calendar designed by the Tet.

(And no, I still don’t know if we’re the good guys. But we’re definitely finding out.)