“More Right” Than Right: Why Being Effective Beats Being Correct

“One of the greatest human failings is to prefer to be right rather than to be effective.”
— Stephen Fry

There it is. Tucked into the elegant baritone of Stephen Fry’s mind: a line that slices through things like a knife through a cheese toastie. In an age where being right feels like a gladiatorial sport, Fry’s words are a quiet rebellion. And more than that, they're a call to arms for the effective, the empathetic, and the evolutionaries.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

We have created a culture where changing your mind is framed as weakness, not wisdom. A flip-flop. A U-turn. A backtrack. Pick your pejorative. So, we cling to being right—clutching our opinions like lifejackets in a sea of online hostility—because admitting we might be wrong has become far more terrifying than actually being wrong.

But here's the twist: being right doesn’t fix the world. Being effective does. Because let’s be honest: nobody changes their mind in public.

The Hard Nut: Progress Demands Mistakes

We live in a time riddled with "wrongs"- systemic injustice, climate catastrophe, rising polarisation, and digital echo chambers. To crack any of these hard nuts, we have to face an uncomfortable truth: progress is messy. It requires humility. It means saying, “I was wrong,” and moving forward anyway. It means trying, failing, adjusting, and trying again.

Because progress is not a straight line, it’s a zigzag (maybe up and down a salt path*) through half-formed ideas, incomplete truths, and occasional breakthroughs.

30 Seconds of Connection

I’m off to see Derren Brown’s new show soon, and there is a moment from his Netflix show Sacrifice, where he takes a man with entrenched racist views and places him in a staged life-or-death scenario. The man, who once would’ve crossed the street to avoid a stranger of a different background, ends up taking a bullet for a Mexican immigrant.

What changed? Well, he did a lot, but the most transformational part seemed to be when he just sat and stared into the eyes of someone he didn’t like.

Thirty seconds. That’s all it took to build empathy. Eye contact. Shared space. Vulnerability. The wall cracked. He cried and embraced the other man.

Despite what we say about “types” or “sides,” we are often fine with the individual. When faced with the person in front of us, rather than the label, most of us soften. We feel. We connect. That racist man didn’t change because someone proved him wrong. He changed because someone made him feel.

Forgiveness: The Technology of Growth

So here’s a radical idea: what if we made openness the new virtue signal? What if we made forgiveness part of our toolkit for progress, not just for personal healing? What if I, rather than looking for imperfection, looked for effectiveness?

For me to be effective, I need to stop pummelling people with my rightness and start inviting them into shared goals. Call people in, not out. Allow space for them to be different now than they were in the past. Because if we truly want the world to change, we can’t just shout from the moral high ground. We have to be willing to come down, reach out a hand, and walk with others - warts, wrongness, and all.

Towards a World That’s More Right

Being right is satisfying. But being effective is transformational.

We won’t get everything right - not today, not tomorrow. But if we aim for a world that’s more right than the one before, that’s progress. That’s purpose. That’s human.

I’m burning my megaphone of certainty. I’m going to stop trying to win arguments and start trying to win people.

Because being right might make me feel good. But being effective? That might just change the world.

Peace, Love and Effectiveness,

Michael

Neurodiversity footnote: I often catch myself wanting to correct people, not out of ego, not as a power play, but from a deep-rooted urge to help. To save them from being wrong. To clarify, improve, and align. It’s what some call a “high justice” instinct, and it’s incredibly common in the Autistic community. The drive is to be effective, to contribute, to make things more right.

But context is everything.

That instinct, while well-meaning, can sometimes backfire. It can feel combative, or controlling, or worse, pedantic. Not because the correction is wrong, but because the timing is. Or the relationship isn’t there. Or the person isn’t ready.

Learning when to step back is one of the hardest lessons: not because we stop caring, but because we care so much we’re willing to pause for the greater good. To let the moment pass so that the message might land later. That’s not giving up on truth. That’s being strategic with it. And that’s how we start building a world that’s more right, not just technically correct. And I’ve noticed, I enjoy things more, and I always learn more things.

*A related personal footnote: I’ve been reading The Salt Path at the moment. I was finding something ‘not quite right’ about the story, then I read with some glee that the story, it appears, might not be quite what it seems in its truthfulness. “Ha!” I thought. Then I remembered. What does it matter in the context of reading and enjoying the story, and getting some lessons from it? Nothing really. I was ruining my own enjoyment. It did, however, make me check my critical illness life cover….

Another Flipping Footnote: You may have noticed I’ve fallen away from my regular Friday slot. It’s because my book writing has consumed my creativity, so I look for a gap in thinking about the book, which arrived this morning. Hope you don’t mind.