One of the most common obstacles to effective decision making by teams is groupthink. The term is used to describe the observation that many groups make poor decisions because they try to reach a consensus and minimize conflict. In doing so they suppress dissenting viewpoints, eschew controversial issues, and isolate themselves from outside influences. The result is that they do not seriously consider alternatives to the group’s view.
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The phenomenon of groupthink was investigated in the 1970s by Irving Janis, a research psychologist at Yale University. He identified various causes of this problem, including the desire for cohesiveness, lack of impartial leadership, homogeneity of group members, and stressful external threats.
In his seminal book on the topic, Groupthink (Cengage Learning, 1982), Janis recommends eight ways to prevent groupthink:
1. Leaders should assign each member the role of “critical evaluator.” This allows each member to freely air objections and doubts.
2. Leaders should not express an opinion when assigning a task to a group.
3. Leaders should absent themselves from many of the group meetings to avoid excessively influencing the outcome.
4. The organization should set up several independent groups, working on the same problem.
5. All effective alternatives should be examined.
6. Each member should discuss the group’s ideas with trusted people outside of the group.
7. The group should invite outside experts into meetings. Group members should be allowed to converse with and question the outside experts.
8. At least one group member should be assigned the role of devil’s advocate. This should be a different person for each meeting.
A much-discussed example of groupthink is the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. The Kennedy administration team uncritically accepted the CIA plan to invade Cuba. They ignored dissenting voices and outside opinion, and underestimated the obstacles. President Kennedy learned from this disaster. During the critical Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 he used “vigilant appraisal” to deliberately avoid groupthink. He invited outside experts to share their viewpoints. He encouraged group members to voice opinions, ask questions, and challenge assumptions. The President deliberately removed himself from some meetings to prevent his opinions dominating.
There have been countless examples of groupthink in executive teams leading to business disasters. Swissair, Kodak, and Enron are salutary lessons. Business leaders can avoid similar catastrophes by learning from Janis and Kennedy to fight the scourge of groupthink.
First published on the Destination Innovation website.
Comments
Niccolò Machiavelli
He wrote about historical cases that come and go: group think could be one of his many examples. It was fashionable a few decades ago, now it isn't anymore. What will the future be like? We aren't looking for efficient processes, we look for news, instead, that are all but news. We knew the drawbacks of groupthink since its very first implementation: why did it take so long to realize its failures? May be in the next year or so we'll also realize that what we've so hardly worked at to prevent risk effects will be completely useless.
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