Assertive Inquiry

A named dialogue practice from Playing To Win, described as the kind of conversation the authors wanted to foster inside a strategy organization. Built on the work of Harvard organizational-learning theorist Chris Argyris, it blends advocacy — the explicit expression of your own thinking, sharing the data and reasoning behind your ideas — with inquiry, a sincere exploration of the thinking of others. In the book’s words, it means “clearly articulating your own ideas and sharing the data and reasoning behind them, while genuinely inquiring into the thoughts and reasoning of your peers.”

The framework sits in the book’s broader argument that strategy is a coherent set of choices best stress-tested through honest, two-sided conversation rather than pure advocacy or pure debate.

Context: Assertive inquiry is associated with Roger Martin (co-author of Playing to Win with A.G. Lafley) and draws on Chris Argyris’s research into the “ladder of inference” and defensive reasoning. The aim is to surface and test the hidden assumptions behind competing views instead of letting them harden into unproductive conflict.

Where this appears

• Playing To Win — introduced as the dialogue practice for the book’s management system, blending advocacy with sincere inquiry and credited to Chris Argyris.