However, I have found out that the way you say things is often much more important than what you actually say. Of course it’s such a thin line beetween sounding confident and appearing cocky and rude. After all, it’s all about perception. I really think you should know your audience. And unfortunately, it’s sometimes smarter to take a long road to get your voice through as ineffective as it sounds.

Perhaps I’m in a good situation in that I’m at a place I can generally voice my honest feedback. Although thinking back, I’ve been doing it ever since I was a kid and it has worked out well for me thus far in life.

People respect both honestly and boldness. I’m in the school of thought you shouldn’t hold back and never worry about hurting the feelings of others, life’s too short.

With everyone else treading carefully, I think there is a big opportunity to run counter to that.

Telling your superiors they are wrong, is only going to weaken your influence at that company and make enemies of your colleagues. Your superiors have extended context and information of the company’s goals and constraints which you probably don’t have. And even if they are 100% incorrect, and you are 100% correct, I’d still tread carefully in just boldly declaring it. If you are anything more than a critic, you will one day make a mistake yourself.

While I agree with most of what you said, the underlying tact which this should be approached with cannot be under emphasized.

I’ll give you an example: someone at Hulu should have stepped up and put their reputation on the line and said “removing our service from Boxee is a mistake, I absolutely refuse to allow this”. They would have been a disrupter.