How do you create the kind of atmosphere where in­formation flows freely?

You have to recognize that your position can be a hindrance to getting the best information. And so can your personality. My own greatest enemy is my personality—I can convince the people on my team of a point of view. I'm older than they are. I've done more research than they have. I know more than they do. I can influence them perhaps too much and therefore not get the best answers. So when we were "doing the research for Good to Great, I built a culture that began with disagreements, that set people up to disagree with each other and disagree with me.

I tried to increase what I call my questions-to-statements ratio. I learned this from the Good to Great leaders we were studying. They were just marvelous at igniting dialogue and debate with Socratic questions. And I tried to make heroes out of those on my team who identified flaws in my thinking. At the next meeting I might say, "I really want to give Leigh or Brian or Stefanie credit. She really pushed my thinking, and I wasn't looking at this right."

I looked for people with a streak of irreverence and independent thought. One of my favorite researchers is a young man who went to Princeton, majored in medieval literature, and then joined the Marine Corps. Now, that's independent thinking. I wanted him on my team because he's not going to care what I think.

The really critical part came in designing the re­search so that for every piece of the puzzle—for every case, every analysis—someone on the team knows that piece as well as I do or better. This was a key mechanism to reduce the odds that my au­thority and strong personality would override the evidence.