I once shared a conference room with a senior executive of a multi-national company and a dozen or so "underlings" like myself. I was asking questions, challenging assumptions, and getting chewed out for it—so much so that colleagues were checking up on me afterward. Later that night, our CTO ordered a bottle of wine at dinner, anticipating I'd need it to calm my nerves.

I spent a few years in that environment trying to be right. It was the lingua franca of importance.

But I learned that "right-ness" was far more subjective than I needed it to be. While the desire to be right can beget incredibly rigorous thought, sheer force of will and feigned confidence were often enough to win the day. If you didn't know what was right, you could always make the other person wrong. In that dynamic, other people's good ideas become a threat.

Reflecting on this and other experiences, I've come to see the pursuit of "being right" as a zero-sum game. I don't deny that establishing what's right can sometimes be the difference between life and death, or at least critically important. But I've found I prefer a different way of working.

I'd rather be in an environment where we're all trying to grow the whole pie—where diverse ideas can collide, sharpen each other, and lead to solutions greater than the sum of their parts. I prefer organic, nuanced learning in environments that are both mimetic and challenging. And frankly, I prefer to have fun.

So now, I choose to focus on being good first... and right second ;)