Silicon Valley has a new favorite word: "taste." Paul Graham declared it the key differentiator in the AI age. VCs are using it as shorthand for founder quality. The New Yorker wrote a piece on why tech bros are obsessed with it. And while the discourse is mostly insufferable, the underlying signal is real.
What they're actually describing, stripped of the self-congratulatory branding, is the willingness to have an opinion. A strong one. In public. Before all the data is in.
That's it. That's "taste." It's not some mystical aesthetic gift. It's the professional courage to take a position.
The Middle Is Where Careers Go to Die
Here's the uncomfortable truth for anyone sitting in the middle of the org chart: most of us in senior positions didn't get here through sheer talent. It was a combination of luck, timing, hard work, and (critically) opinion. Somewhere along the way, we said something that mattered. We took a position when it was easier to hedge. We put a stake in the ground when everyone else was "still gathering information."
The people who get stuck in the middle have a specific pathology. They've learned to be careful. They've been trained by bad managers, by punishing cultures, by watching others get burned, to never be wrong in public. So they default to the safe move: wait for consensus, echo the room, present both sides without recommending one.
This is career poison. Not because the organization punishes fence-sitters (most organizations reward them in the short term). But because a person without a position is a person without a signal. In a noisy environment, no signal means no visibility, no influence, and eventually no relevance.
The Opinion Is the Foundation
Paul Saffo coined the phrase "strong opinions, weakly held" in the mid-1980s at the Institute for the Future. The framework is deceptively simple: form a conviction with whatever information you have, commit to it fully, and then actively seek disconfirming evidence. When the evidence arrives, update without ego.
The first half is where most people fail. They think the phrase gives them permission to be wishy-washy; to float half-positions and call it "being open-minded." That's a misread. The strong part matters. You have to commit. You have to be willing to be specific, to be wrong, and to have your name attached to a position.
Why? Because a strong opinion creates surface area. It gives people something to engage with, push back on, refine, or rally around. A vague stance creates nothing. It's a smooth wall with no handholds.
Data follows opinion, not the other way around. You form a hypothesis. You test it. You refine or discard based on evidence. This is the scientific method dressed in business casual. The people who wait for all the data before forming a view are not being rigorous; they're being passive.
The Loosely Held Part Is Not Weakness
Colin Powell put it plainly: "Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it."
This is the second half of the equation, and it's where senior leaders consistently fail in the other direction. They form strong opinions (good) and then weld those opinions to their identity. The opinion becomes a territory to defend rather than a hypothesis to test. When contradicting data arrives, they don't update; they rationalize, dismiss, or shoot the messenger.
The "loosely held" part isn't about lack of conviction. It's about the separation of ego from position. You can advocate fiercely for your view and change your mind in the same meeting if the evidence warrants it. These aren't contradictory behaviors. They're complementary ones.
When your opinions are backed by data and you've communicated them as data-driven positions, changing them becomes the expected move when new data arrives. Your credibility doesn't take a hit when you update; it takes a hit when you refuse to.
The Secret Sauce: A Culture of Curiosity
Here's where this stops being a personal career hack and becomes an organizational advantage.
A team where everyone holds strong, data-backed opinions and updates them fluidly isn't just high-performing. It's a learning organization. It's a culture of curiosity and exploration. People aren't defending turf. They're seeking truth.
This is the foundation: Have the strength of opinion to seek what's real, and the confidence (grounded in data, not ego) to change course when reality doesn't match your model.
Most cultures reward one half or the other. They either reward the loudest voice (strong opinion, never update) or the safest position (no opinion, can't be wrong). Neither produces insight. Neither produces growth. And neither produces the kind of leaders who can navigate uncertainty — which is all the time, everywhere, especially now.
The organizations that figure this out, that build cultures where having an opinion is expected, backing it with data is required, and updating it publicly is celebrated: those are the ones that move faster than the market. Not because they're smarter. Because they're not wasting cycles on political positioning and ego preservation.
The Practical Takeaway
If you're stuck in the middle, here's the move: Form an opinion. Make it specific. Back it with whatever data you have. State it clearly. And when new information arrives that contradicts it, update just as clearly.
Do this consistently and two things happen. First, people start coming to you for signal, because you're one of the few providing any. Second, you build a reputation for intellectual honesty that compounds faster than any technical skill.
The strength to have an opinion. The discipline to back it with evidence. The confidence to change it publicly.
That's not "taste." That's leadership.