“The greatest designers are those who can change their minds exceptionally well.” – Chris Fahey, quoted in an article for UX Matters by Whitney Hess.
To create great products, you must have an open mind. If you are not willing to accept new ideas — or data that contradicts your current point of view — you will fail to find the best solution. If you are too attached to a particular design, you will fall victim to it and find yourself unable to see the potential of other viable ideas.
In user experience design, we often practice something called “parallel design”: we have multiple designers try to come up with a solution for the same problem, completely independent of one another. The result is a wider array of potential solutions that are uninfluenced by the others. But this exercise requires that each designer can 1) defend their design (“this is why I think this works”), and 2) be open-minded enough to change their mind if another solution (or an element of another solution) is better.
Failure to see the value of another solution will only lead to inferior design, and consequently, an inferior product.
Good reminder! Open-mindedness is a “virtue” and the idea of “parallel design” has corresponding ideas across the business disciplines.
Of course, we have to keep in mind that being open-minded is not the same as being accepting of every viewpoint (implied here by saying the designs have to be defensible); in the very least one must be able to admit in what way one is biased if that’s the case. A prerequisite of open-mindedness is self-awareness.