"In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone"
About this Quote
Galbraith, a sharp observer of corporate and bureaucratic life, points to the perverse incentives that shape judgment inside large institutions. The measure of safety is not truth or accuracy but alignment with the crowd. If everyone decides wrongly together, blame is diluted, responsibility is ambiguous, and careers remain intact. If one person stands apart and proves correct, the short-term cost of dissent can still outweigh the later vindication; if that lone voice is wrong, there is no cover at all. The calculus is rational at the individual level and disastrous at the organizational level.
He wrote extensively about the technostructure in big corporations, where stability, planning, and consensus are prized. Novel insights threaten plans and status hierarchies, so they encounter friction. The result is groupthink: the assumption that what is widely believed must be safe. John Maynard Keynes captured the same dynamic when he noted it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
Modern finance offers a stark example. In the run-up to the 2008 crisis, portfolio managers who questioned mortgage securities risked underperforming their peers and losing clients while the bubble inflated. Many chose to hold what everyone else held. When the crash came, the fact that so many were wrong together softened the individual consequences. A similar logic has surfaced in bureaucratic failures from space shuttles to health systems, where committees create the illusion of certainty and spread accountability thin.
The line is not a cynical shrug but a warning about misaligned incentives. Truth requires minority protection. Organizations that want better decisions must reward well-reasoned dissent, institutionalize devil’s advocates and red teams, separate performance from short-term consensus, and keep rigorous records of forecasts so accuracy has visible value. Courage helps, but design matters more. Make it at least as safe to be right alone as it is to be wrong together, and the quality of judgment will rise.
He wrote extensively about the technostructure in big corporations, where stability, planning, and consensus are prized. Novel insights threaten plans and status hierarchies, so they encounter friction. The result is groupthink: the assumption that what is widely believed must be safe. John Maynard Keynes captured the same dynamic when he noted it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
Modern finance offers a stark example. In the run-up to the 2008 crisis, portfolio managers who questioned mortgage securities risked underperforming their peers and losing clients while the bubble inflated. Many chose to hold what everyone else held. When the crash came, the fact that so many were wrong together softened the individual consequences. A similar logic has surfaced in bureaucratic failures from space shuttles to health systems, where committees create the illusion of certainty and spread accountability thin.
The line is not a cynical shrug but a warning about misaligned incentives. Truth requires minority protection. Organizations that want better decisions must reward well-reasoned dissent, institutionalize devil’s advocates and red teams, separate performance from short-term consensus, and keep rigorous records of forecasts so accuracy has visible value. Courage helps, but design matters more. Make it at least as safe to be right alone as it is to be wrong together, and the quality of judgment will rise.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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