There Are Two Sides to Every Story

In an age of algorithms, echo chambers and ideological entrenchment, the art of truly listening has become unfashionable, even dangerous. Outrage spreads faster than insight and social media rewards certainty over curiosity. Our ability to hold two thoughts in tension - to truly entertain another side - is fading fast. We’ve instead grown fond of moral declarations and allergic to nuance. In doing so, we risk mistaking our echo chambers for the whole landscape. 

Perhaps nowhere is this more important than in the debates shaping our economies, our cities, and our futures. Whether shouted from a podcast microphone or buried in the footnotes of a planning regulation, behind every opinion there is, inevitably, another side we often don’t hear or see. 

For founders and entrepreneurs leading teams and building futures, thoughts in tension are a must. This isn’t just a philosophical exercise but merely practical leadership. Navigating complexity, weighing competing truths, and embracing uncomfortable realities is the daily work of building something that lasts. Truth vs Story, Operational Efficiency vs Team Wellbeing, Cost of Product vs Customer Satisfaction all wrestle in our daily lives. We tend to do one thing like we do everything and keeping our wits about us and being open to duality elsewhere helps us be better leaders in business. 

In this world of outrage-driven algorithms and opinion masquerading as moral clarity, complexity is increasingly treated like betrayal. But real progress, the kind that builds businesses, houses and societies, doesn’t live on one side of the argument. It lives in the tension between them. 

The House That Debate Built

Housing is a subject that stirs emotion in my own community and many others. In the UK soaring rents, chronic undersupply and intergenerational inequality have left millions understandably wary of anything that sounds like deregulation. The knee-jerk reaction is familiar: if planning laws are relaxed, we’ll be swamped with soulless, speculative estates and rabbit-hutch flats built for investor returns and certainly not fit for human lives. Experience has driven stakes into our hearts on this topic it seems. 

But step outside that framing for a moment.

What if the true scandal is not overdevelopment, but paralysis? A system so knotted with red tape and local objections that it actively blocks progress - not just for developers, but for nurses, teachers, and families priced out of the communities they serve? The Financial Times recently highlighted a shift: the government’s quiet push to remove barriers to building, aiming to reduce cost, accelerate delivery, and meet real demand.

It may not be perfect, and if you read the headline alone you’d only consider the jobs being lost, but it may reduce the cost of housing provision and improve delivery, so perhaps it’s necessary.

Thoughtful urbanism is worth defending and so is the right to a roof over one’s head. If the cost of appeasing everyone is mass exclusion, are we still on the side of justice?

The challenge isn’t choosing between soul and speed but having the courage to pursue both. That requires less shouting and more listening. And the willingness to admit that sometimes, the other side has a point.

Echoes in the Chamber

The same theme of binary thinking - growth vs equality, freedom vs control - played out in dramatic fashion on Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast recently. In one corner sat Daniel Priestley, defending the entrepreneurial spirit and the wealth it creates. In the other, Gary Stevenson, warning of the gaping wound that is economic inequality and the systemic rot it portends.

Daniel sees wealth creation as the tide that lifts all boats, powered by economic freedom and investment in innovation. He argues, not unreasonably, that punitive taxation risks, and is, driving away the very talent and capital that builds the future. Gary, a former trader turned inequality campaigner, counters with stark moral clarity: that the system leads to a concentration of wealth so extreme it threatens the majority and with it the stability of society itself.

Both men are intelligent. Both make valid points. And yet, for long stretches of the conversation, they talk past one another, locked in intellectual silos, more concerned with defending their model than evolving it. 

I found Daniel’s position during the conversation to be generally very open to actual discussion and I applaud him for his open mindedness enabling his calm. I am, however, acutely aware that it may be my own echo chamber that provides me with this opinion, supporting the person in my own camp. 

We also have to congratulate Steven for putting the two together. A forum where both sides can be heard is so important to preserve, and Steven managed to stay impartial and not argue either side, whilst we know he would be in Daniel’s camp as well. 

It was a great effort while certainly, there were moments when it was like watching a late 1970’s Miles Davis jam session where each musician went off on their own and insisted on playing a different tune. What was missing was not information, but synthesis. 

And while Steven brought a possibility for discussion, most don’t. 

The High Cost of Tribal Thinking

This failure to engage with the “other side” is not just a podcast problem. It is a global ailment. The US and UK - once seen as models of liberal democracy - are showing symptoms of long-term societal sclerosis. On one side, progressive voices cry for justice and redistribution. On the other, libertarian instincts rally around freedom and entrepreneurship. The middle ground is compromise, nuance, and constructive disagreement. And yet this is rapidly eroding.

And the consequences are no longer abstract. We see them in our crumbling schools, our overwhelmed NHS, and the quiet desperation of working families who can’t afford to heat their homes or feed their children or find housing at all. 

Worse still, at the geopolitical extreme, we see 300 lives a day lost in Ukraine and Gaza alone. This is the most tragic manifestation of ideological rigidity and tribal vengeance. War, like economic debate, too often becomes a zero-sum game with empathy entirely absent from any process of discussion. 

The False Dichotomy

What if the truth lies not in choosing sides, but in fusing insights?

In my opinion, and it may not be popular, we must create the conditions for wealth generation, including fewer obstacles for those willing to take risks and build. But we must also find ways to ensure that the fruits of this growth are not hoarded in digital vaults or lost to tax arbitrage in the Cayman Islands or geographical sidestepping.

Yes, we need taxation but not as a cudgel to punish success. Taxes need to be a tool to reinvest in the very foundation that allows society to function: education, healthcare, public safety, and social mobility.

Can we reduce the burden of tax on earned income, where the work is done, while increasing it on unproductive speculation and multi-generational hoarding? Could we not foster entrepreneurship, where ideas, change and progress occur, through lighter regulation while demanding more robust responsibility from those tech giants extracting value with little accountability?

Could we, in short, build a system that rewards value creation but penalises value extraction? You can tell I’m a lifelong entrepreneur. But I shall get back to the point of the conversation, the discussion. 

See Beyond the Sides

The danger in our current discourse - whether on housing, taxation, or inequality - isn’t that we disagree. It’s that we no longer believe the other side has anything useful to say. We caricature, strawman, and scroll on. While I try to remain open at all times, I find myself doing just this at times. 

Wisdom doesn’t live at the poles. Nor does it arrive with the loudest voice, the cleverest put-down, or even the best at arguing. It more often emerges from the quiet courage to say, to ask ourselves: “Maybe I don’t have the whole picture?”

Progress requires listening, not to confirm our righteousness but to reveal what we’ve missed.

If we want to build thriving societies or even just better businesses, we need to reclaim the lost art of dialogue. That means hearing not only what makes us feel vindicated, but what makes us uncomfortable. It means recognising that the world is messy, the economy is complex, and people hold views shaped by experiences we do not share.

Because real progress, the kind that endures, is forged not in victory over one another but in the uncomfortable, essential space in between. In business this is often listening to criticism of our practices, to solutions for the challenges we are going through. 

Having your child’s behaviour criticised by another parent can be tough, and having your parenting style be ripped apart even more so. I use this analogy as, being truthful, our business is like a child. We love them, care for them, want to see them grow up and succeed, and would be mortified and more if they died. 

The sharing of conflicting opinions is where peer groups shine and business owners become better leaders. At TableNetwork, our most valuable work happens inside Tables, the curated peer group sessions designed not to offer easy agreement, but to foster the kind of rigorous, compassionate disagreement that leads to clarity.

You don’t just get advice. You get perspective. From people who’ve been through it. From people who will call you out when you’re fooling yourself and lift you up when you’re stuck and even hold your hand, parenting you though the transition needed to turn the challenge around.

We built TableNetwork for exactly this reason - to help business owners escape the echo chambers of their own heads, and instead grow through dialogue, difference, and thoughtful challenge.

There are always two sides to every story. The brave don’t just listen. We learn, we adapt, and we lead. Which side will you sit on?

Ed Fowkes

March 2025