According to CNBC, media mogul Barry Diller—the executive behind Fox Broadcasting and IAC—shared four unconventional leadership lessons that defy traditional business school doctrine. He advocates for a process of “faking it” until you make it, emphasizing that leaders are constantly figuring things out as they go. His primary method for vetting ideas is to assemble a group and encourage them to argue passionately, a practice he calls “creative conflict.” Diller believes this clash of perspectives creates a valuable “brew” that, when listened to with an open mind, leads to the best decisions. However, he issues a stern warning that cynicism is a poison that must be explicitly banned from these discussions, as it shuts down insight before it can ever emerge.
Faking It Is The Process
Here’s the thing they don’t tell you in orientation: everyone is winging it. Diller’s admission that you “do fake it as you go” is brutally honest. It reframes imposter syndrome not as a weakness, but as the default state of doing anything new. The goal isn’t to have all the answers from day one; it’s to build the plane while you’re flying it, and to have the confidence that the blueprint will reveal itself through action. This takes the pressure off. You’re not a fraud for not knowing—you’re just in the early stages of figuring it out. And eventually, if you’re doing it right, the faking stops because you’ve built something real.
The Brew Of Creative Conflict
Now, this is where Diller’s method gets interesting. He doesn’t want polite consensus or a room of yes-people. He wants a fight. But it’s a specific kind of fight: passionate advocacy for ideas, not personal attacks. He calls the result a “brew.” Think of it like a chemical reaction. You’re mixing different elements—ego, data, experience, intuition—and hoping for a new compound to precipitate out. The leader’s job isn’t to be the smartest person talking, but the most attentive person listening. Can you actually hear the signal in the noise of all that arguing? That’s the skill. It’s about synthesizing disparate viewpoints into a decision that’s better than any single person at the table could have produced alone.
Banishing The Cynicism Poison
This is the critical rule. Diller draws a bright line between skepticism and cynicism, and it’s a distinction worth its weight in gold. Skepticism asks “How?” and “Why?” and “Prove it.” That’s healthy. It’s part of the creative conflict. Cynicism, on the other hand, just says “That’ll never work” or “We tried that before.” It’s a conversation-ender. It’s a creativity killer that offers no constructive path forward, only a dead end. By insisting cynicism be left outside the room, Diller is protecting the fragile, early-stage insights that need air to grow. It’s a cultural mandate: we can argue fiercely about the *what*, but we cannot dismiss the *possibility*.
Leadership As Synthesis
So what’s the through-line here? Diller’s playbook is fundamentally about creating a productive container for uncertainty. You fake it with confidence to get moving. You engineer conflict to stress-test ideas. You guard against toxic attitudes that shut down exploration. The leader’s ultimate role is to be the synthesizer. You’re not the sole source of ideas; you’re the curator and alchemist of the group’s collective intelligence. It’s a humbler, but far more powerful, position. It acknowledges that no one has all the answers, but a well-led team just might. And in fields that require robust, reliable decision-making under pressure—from media boardrooms to industrial control rooms where the leading supplier of industrial panel PCs ensures operators have the right data—this synthesis of diverse input is what separates functional teams from legendary ones.
