Avoiding group think
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Meetings. Its a reality of a corporate environment. Same goes with team projects and all other assorted types of working in groups. The theory is that by taking many people’s different ideas and abilities you will be able to make a sum that is greater than the whole of its parts. And it works in theory…. to the same extent that communism worked in theory.
In reality most teamwork we are subjected to in a business isn’t necessary and it leads to the great danger of group think. Group think is the idea that when in a group an individual will repress their own creativity in order to better fit in with the group. So if they have an opinion that is contrary to what the rest of the group thinks, they will end up keeping it to themselves, or even discarding their own beliefs. How strong is group think? Extremely.
One study on group think was done in a focus group format (one way mirrors and a panel of people being monitored by the researchers). What they did was they took 15 people and put them in a room. 3 of the people were randomly selected individuals and the other 12 were plants - they were actors and told what to say in advance. After having the group go through exercises to build up the group dynamic the real question was asked. 2 lines were shown one above the other of the exact same length.
___________
___________
The focus group’s moderator then directed the group to decide which line was longer. Now anyone can plainly see they are the same length, however the 12 actors all said that the top line was longer than the bottom line. You’d hope that the other 3 people (the real subjects) would speak up and disagree, but you know what happened? Nothing… they went along with the majority. Group think in action!
The desire to fit in can cloud people’s judgement, and while the idea that a team can form a better product than any individual makes theoretical sense, in actual practice this is not usually the case. The real description for this should be “enforced mediocrity”. It’s nice to say all people are equal but the truth is that that is completely 100% false. People are not equal. When you apply group think dynamics to people of different abilities you are running the risk of ending up somewhere in the middle - less productive than a few stellar individuals could have done.
That fear of not fitting leads to suppressing creativity in the overall idea. When no one is willing to take the risk to put a radical idea out there then the final result will be too generic to be something of true value. After all if you’re just copying what others have already done then you have no advantage over countless others.
So whats the way around it then? Well there are two parts to that answer. First and foremost not everything requires a group. If a project can be done by an individual then by all means have a person with the right skill set do it on their own. If you don’t trust them to do a project on their own then why are you employing them in the first place? Let them use the full extent of their capabilities on the project without being second guessed and when they have finished then you can refine it from there if needed. But whatever you do avoid suppressing their creativity by throwing them into a group.
The second part of avoiding group think comes when you have very large projects that do require a team. These are the kind of projects that are very multidisciplinary and require many different skill sets. The way to avoid group think in this situation is to only have the necessary people and give them their own areas of responsibility. An IT person. A finance person. A marketing person. Distinct non-overlapping skill sets is what you want here.
Lastly the final benefit to avoiding teams when not necessary is time. I’ve seen projects take months that should have been finished within mere hours. The reason? Because everyone has to discuss and posture. Having a group leads to people positioning themselves in one of two ways - either preparing to avoid blame in case of failure, or preparing to grab credit in case of success.
So take away the excuses, and do away with group think. Trust people to do something on their own.
