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Group Decision: Don't Always Play 'Follow My Leader'
The media has recently been focusing on the celebrations of the Apollo 11 moon landing, which took place 40 years ago. In contrast, two days of national tragedy have been etched into US history forever: the Challenger space shuttle exploding during lift-off in January 1986; and the Colombia space shuttle being destroyed on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere in February 2003.
Both of these disasters could have been avoided if the team leaders had listened to the concerns of more junior staff. With Challenger, managers ignored warnings from the engineers that the cold weather might cause the O-rings to fail. However, this important lesson was never learnt. Years later, managers ignored requests from junior staff to ask the Department of Defence to use its spy satellites to photograph potentially damaged areas of the Columbia shuttle – with devastating results.
Groupthink
Social psychologist, Irving Janis, developed a theory of how groups come to make poor decisions – he called it ‘groupthink’. He applied it to other decision-making failures, such as Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs invasion and Nixon’s Watergate scandal. It refers to a specific decision-making style.
‘Groupthink’ occurs when a group is seeking cohesiveness but is isolated from outside influences, and can end up following an authoritarian leader. As a result, the group fails to follow up alternative ideas properly and also fails to assess the risks of the options that are favoured by the leader.
This decision-making style isn’t limited to large national projects. We should be wary of ‘groupthink’ in our companies at board level; in stakeholder teams with whom we work; and in workshops. And from an Insight team’s point of view, we should also watch out for it in focus groups – where the minority voice may not be heard or followed up properly, and where negatives or risks can be easily overlooked.
Better decisions
Group decision-making can be improved by:
- Developing an open and honest environment, where individual opinions are welcomed and considered
- Promoting criticism and scepticism of all viewpoints - especially those favoured by the leader
- An astute leader who asks for the opinions of other people before making their position known, to ensure that they have access to everyone’s thoughts and opinions
It’s also healthy to include the views of an external expert. The Insight team can be very well-placed for working with stakeholder groups, providing that external view from their wealth of knowledge about markets and consumers.
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