[00:00:15] Welcome back to the Management Lab. I'm Sean Hansen from Saunders College Business at Rochester
[00:00:21] Institute of Technology. And I'm Uri Gal from the University of Sydney
[00:00:25] Business School in Sydney, Australia. Hey Sean. Hey Uri. It's been a long time since we've been able
[00:00:32] to record. We haven't been able to record in weeks and weeks. How many, not that many weeks,
[00:00:38] is it going to make you sound like we're having... I think it's been about a month.
[00:00:40] I think it's been about a month since we've been able to record.
[00:00:43] I have a good way of ascertaining what happened because I recall when we talked last time,
[00:00:49] we talked about the debate that had just taken place between Biden and Trump.
[00:00:57] Yeah, so this was before the ascendance of Kamala Harris and the withdrawal of Joe Biden.
[00:01:06] All of the madness that is the political landscape here in my homeland has...
[00:01:12] A lot has happened since we talked last.
[00:01:15] So yeah, a lot has happened since we last spoke and it seems like you're from an outside
[00:01:21] perspective looking inside. The whole thing is a great mess.
[00:01:27] It's pretty wild. It's pretty wild. Yeah. And as we've talked about before,
[00:01:34] the thing that upsets me the most is the nature of political discourse such as it is
[00:01:40] in this country. It has become so tribal and maybe it was always thus, I don't know,
[00:01:47] but it just seems so tribal in so many ways that it really disturbs me. It just feels like we're,
[00:01:56] as a society, we're totally talking past one another. I mean people in the U.S. now are
[00:02:01] legitimately speculating on a new civil war and things like that, which I honestly don't
[00:02:09] know how that would play out because even though there are red states and blue states
[00:02:12] and things like that, I don't have that same fear because everyone's interspersed.
[00:02:18] So it's not like when you had clear geographic boundaries for interests as in 1861.
[00:02:27] Yeah, you're probably correct that the situation today is not as bad as it once was
[00:02:32] in your country, but I still agree with you that the level of tribalism and the incapacity to have
[00:02:40] a rational conversation about the matters of the day, but instead having all these conversations
[00:02:46] that very quickly descend into almost complete chaos is really telling. And it's interesting
[00:02:53] because it actually has a lot to do with the topic that we want to talk about today, which is
[00:02:58] group thing, the phenomenon of group think. So yeah, group think. I think this is actually a
[00:03:06] topic that I studied back in my undergraduate years. I remember doing some big research paper on
[00:03:14] this and so it goes pretty far back. Interestingly, I think we use this phrase all the time.
[00:03:20] People use it in sort of maybe not all the time, but I think it's the kind of thing that pops up
[00:03:24] in general discourse now and then. But I don't think people have a sense of sort of the deeper
[00:03:30] meaning and the structures of what we mean by group think. I think people tend to use it
[00:03:35] just as shorthand for something like herd mentality. But the theory is actually quite rich and has
[00:03:43] interesting history. But before you get into it, can I just make a quick note?
[00:03:50] Because we are going to talk about the phenomenon and the structure of it and the causes and the
[00:03:54] symptoms and the antecedents and so on. But I do want to make sure that we keep this grounded,
[00:04:03] because the phenomenon of group think is not entirely or even mainly theoretical. It is
[00:04:08] extremely relevant to dynamics that we're witnessing today. So we mentioned briefly
[00:04:13] politics. That's certainly one area where we see various manifestations of group think,
[00:04:18] not just in the US. I can think of a handful of other European countries, for instance, that
[00:04:24] demonstrate really nicely that various dimensions of group think social media
[00:04:30] and social discourse in general. But certainly on social media, the way these
[00:04:35] conversations and dialogues play out, many of them obey the rules or the dynamics of group
[00:04:42] think. So it's definitely a practical, relevant phenomenon. And we'll talk about various examples
[00:04:48] a bit later. So we're not going to keep it theoretical and up in the air.
[00:04:51] Yeah, right. Absolutely. I actually think that the social media elements, and I want to get
[00:04:57] to this as we delve into it a little more though, I think it exacerbates it. I think the
[00:05:01] technologies that we use now actually have increased the likelihood of group think emerging in
[00:05:09] dynamics and group dynamics and decision making. Also, in terms of the practical relevance, I think
[00:05:17] anyone listening to us will immediately recognize cases of the types of things that we hit in terms
[00:05:23] of what are the characteristics of a group think. I think we all see it. I think we see it all the
[00:05:29] time. Yeah, I was going to say in business as well. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well,
[00:05:35] I think this is one of those areas where unlike, I think a couple of weeks ago with some of the,
[00:05:40] I forget what the AI topic we were talking about was, but we didn't necessarily have a lot of great
[00:05:45] easy answers for managers. I think this is one domain where there's a lot of recommendations
[00:05:49] that can be offered for things that managers can do to reduce the risk of group think,
[00:05:57] bad outcomes owing to group think. Right. Okay. So why don't we talk about the
[00:06:02] phenomenon what it is, symptoms, effects, structure. Okay. So again, it's usually attributed to a guy
[00:06:11] named Irving Janus based on a book back in, I believe it was 72. I was kind of intrigued as we
[00:06:17] were reading up and refreshing on this that the coining of the term group think actually goes back
[00:06:22] almost a decade earlier to a guy named William White. But in both cases, they were specifically
[00:06:28] referencing or modeling themselves off of Orwell. Right? We've talked about 1984 before,
[00:06:34] where he talks about things like double think, yeah, you've got it right behind you. That's right.
[00:06:38] And in both cases, they drew these direct parallels to this as a phenomenon that's
[00:06:43] very indicative of the types of social dynamics that Orwell was warning about in 1984.
[00:06:50] So what does it mean? It is this tendency and actually I should get,
[00:06:56] be ready to pause or just hold on while I get it up. Okay. So Janus' definition specifically is
[00:07:07] that group think is a quick and easy way to refer to the mode of thinking that persons engage in
[00:07:11] when concurrent seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in group that it tends to override
[00:07:17] realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action. So maybe that's a little overly wordy,
[00:07:23] but the idea is that one of the dynamics that make the need for group feeling and a spree decor
[00:07:30] within a cohesive group override their decisions or their inclinations to make good decisions.
[00:07:38] Right? So the ability to make good decisions and to evaluate their environment gets essentially
[00:07:45] inhibited because they are focused so intently upon keeping the cohesion of the group high.
[00:07:55] Right. At the expense of having a rational conversation and a sober examination of the
[00:08:01] evidence that may present themselves to them. Right, right. And a lot of the original work on
[00:08:06] this specifically was based on case studies again. I know you don't want to get into these,
[00:08:11] but you can look at sort of tragedies or fiascos that have emerged over the years,
[00:08:16] the Bay of Pigs, the Challenger disaster that was after Irving's work or Janus' work.
[00:08:22] But the Challenger disaster has been pointed to as a classic example of this. So lots of the
[00:08:28] bombing of Pearl Harbor or I think specifically the US government's failure to
[00:08:34] prepare and defend against the bombing of Pearl Harbor. So lots of these classic cases where
[00:08:38] it looks like somebody just screwed up. Right? Just bad decision. And in these sociological
[00:08:44] analyses, they said, well, it's not just a bad decision. It wasn't just, you know, there are
[00:08:48] structural reasons why this happens. And that's where this theory of group think emerges.
[00:08:53] Can I touch on some of these structural properties of groups that might make it more
[00:08:58] prone to group think? So you touched on a couple of them before. So there's high group
[00:09:03] cohesion. The group is uniform in some fundamental way and is highly motivated to retain and maintain
[00:09:11] that cohesion oftentimes at the expense of exploring various alternatives to making a decision.
[00:09:18] Yeah. So the cohesion of the group overrides every other concern, essentially.
[00:09:23] Yes. And it's amplified or compounded by insulation. So the group is more likely
[00:09:31] to exhibit group think properties when it's insulated from the outside environment in some
[00:09:35] important fashion. So there's not a free flow of information with the environment.
[00:09:43] It tends to happen more when there's a lack of procedural norms,
[00:09:48] right? That dictate that whatever steps have to be taken before a decision is made.
[00:09:53] Yeah, we have a process. So when there's not a process to guide the decision-making process,
[00:09:58] or the decision-making exercise, it's much more likely to descend into a group think dynamic.
[00:10:04] Yeah. There's group homogeneity. So like we said before, the group is uniform in some
[00:10:10] fundamental way. And by the way, I want to go back to this because we can tie this
[00:10:15] to the whole conversation around diversity and how important diversity is.
[00:10:19] So I think diversity is important, but relevant diversity is important. And
[00:10:24] I'm eager to come back to this. I can already see you're flinching a bit.
[00:10:28] Or is it just a drink? Well, what's happening to you?
[00:10:31] Yeah, I'm flinching. I'm flinching. I think diversity of membership winds up being one
[00:10:37] of the really important elements for countering group think.
[00:10:42] All right. Another important factor is high external stress or even a threat from the
[00:10:51] environment that tends to exacerbate or to make the group more prone to these dynamics
[00:10:59] and lack of leader impartiality, right? When the leader has a certain position.
[00:11:05] Some on the scale. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They have a certain position that they want to see
[00:11:09] through. So that tends to exacerbate group think as well.
[00:11:14] Yeah. So those are sort of the structural conditions that make this tend to emerge.
[00:11:19] And then we might just quickly touch on some of the characteristics that are reflected then in
[00:11:24] the group. One is that you have, and this is sort of the list again, the Janus set down and has
[00:11:30] been widely adopted since one is an illusion of invulnerability where the group thinks,
[00:11:36] you know, we're going to win. This is going to win. Don't worry. It's going to work out.
[00:11:41] Part of that is reflective of the fact that there's a sense of moral inherent
[00:11:47] morality or moral superiority or something like that in the group where they are
[00:11:52] completely convinced that they are in the right with regard to, you know, whatever it is they're
[00:11:58] pursuing. Third, collective rationalization, which is like they justify the use of evidence,
[00:12:05] you know, they will basically filter out evidence that might contradict their preferred
[00:12:12] point of view and they... That sounds similar to a confirmation bias a lot.
[00:12:17] Yeah, I think that's right. But it's a collective form, right? So confirmation bias can be, you know,
[00:12:24] on the part of any given researcher, for example, where they know the answer they're trying to get
[00:12:29] to and that's one where I do think that can often happen subconsciously, where they're not
[00:12:33] necessarily deliberately pulling out the things that contradict their thesis, their hypothesis.
[00:12:41] But in the group think dynamic, they're actually collectively weeding out
[00:12:48] the evidence that would contradict their preferred view and only focusing on and emphasizing and
[00:12:54] underscoring that which supports their preferred view of a situation. Out-group stereotypes
[00:13:02] is another one. So they tend to look at groups that are outside of their own
[00:13:07] and stereotype and characterize them in the way they choose. Like this is the one where
[00:13:13] the parallels to our political environment are just blatantly obvious, right? Like
[00:13:19] both political parties in the United States just engage in these straw men
[00:13:24] of those with whom they disagree. And it's just so stark. So that tendency to sort of
[00:13:32] those that are outside the group is a big element of this. Self-censorship is a big one,
[00:13:38] meaning members of the group, even if they disagree, they might have a personal inclination
[00:13:44] to disagree, but they won't say it, right? And some of that is because of the absence of an
[00:13:51] impartial leader, right? People don't always want to contradict the leader.
[00:13:55] And actually one of the really interesting things that we saw in some of this research is
[00:13:58] that these group think dynamics are particularly high in societies where there is a high power
[00:14:06] differential, right? Where your power dynamics are such that maybe they're more hierarchical,
[00:14:14] you get more of this because people who are lower in a hierarchy will hold their tongue
[00:14:19] even if they think something else. Yeah. Do you know what this reminds me of?
[00:14:25] I'm sure you remember. So there was a kind of a hype moment in the 70s and the 80s of
[00:14:33] what we refer to as group decision support systems, which were those systems that
[00:14:40] were meant to be used in executive boardrooms and stuff like that to help groups that were
[00:14:45] going to make strategic decisions, make them in a more rational way. And the idea behind
[00:14:50] these technologies was that you wanted to anonymize people in the room so as to allow
[00:14:56] everybody who's present to speak their mind without fear of being reprimanded by anybody else
[00:15:01] and specifically from being reprimanded by the leader, right? So that's what these
[00:15:06] technologies were meant to achieve. And I don't know if they were targeted specifically at
[00:15:10] combating group thing. I don't recall reading that ever, but it strikes me that that's pretty
[00:15:16] much what they were trying to achieve, right? I think so. Yeah. I would have to go back and
[00:15:20] look at that research. But yeah, I think so. I think that's exactly why that type of move
[00:15:25] might be advisable. Yeah. And I think we've since learned that anonymity has its own downsides.
[00:15:34] Yeah, especially on social media. I'm not sure that's the same dynamic exactly because
[00:15:38] we're not talking about groups of thousands of people there but maybe a handful like a dozen
[00:15:42] people or something sitting around the table in the room. It also makes me think of Habermas.
[00:15:48] So there's this German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, who came up with the theory of communicative
[00:15:55] action and he describes various modalities of communication between people and in societies.
[00:16:02] But one of the modalities he talks about is what he calls ideal speech,
[00:16:07] where every piece of speech, every utterance is ought to be judged on the merit of what was
[00:16:14] spoken and not based on who said that thing, right? Right. And that according to him is the best
[00:16:22] way to achieve not just harmony and collaboration but also the most optimal outcomes in a given
[00:16:30] communicative activity. So that strikes me as something that's kind of relevant to that
[00:16:34] as well. Yeah, and I think that's something that we have a dearth of right now. I think one of the
[00:16:40] things that drives me crazy is people who are overly deferential to experts. Expertise has value
[00:16:47] but this idea that others are not capable of reason and argumentation if they don't have
[00:16:55] a PhD in a given subject is crazy. And I think we see a lot of that. I think we saw a lot of that
[00:17:02] play out in the pandemic as opinions about things sort of wavered back and forth on multiple topics
[00:17:08] of sort of pandemic response. It's funny you're saying this. I thought you were going to say the
[00:17:12] exact opposite. Meaning that people should be more deferential to experts? Well, no, I thought
[00:17:18] that the main phenomenon we've seen play out during the pandemic and after is a very easy
[00:17:26] dismissal of experts and people who are more than excited to share their opinions about topics
[00:17:35] in which they have no expertise. And many other people will listen just because that person happened
[00:17:41] to have let's say a million followers on your chosen platform. Yeah, that's a good point.
[00:17:46] Actually, you're right. I could see so I still think there is this argumentation around from
[00:17:55] it's like it's a logical fallacy and I forget what the name of it is but it's
[00:17:59] you know, the one where you're not arguing about the core or you're not analyzing the core of an
[00:18:07] argument. Instead, you're arguing from the position of the individual. And I do think we've
[00:18:14] seen a lot of this in recent years where people say, you know, well, what do you know,
[00:18:17] you don't have a PhD in this subject as though that's the only mark of someone who
[00:18:22] should have an opinion if they can make a good argument. I do think some of what you're talking
[00:18:26] about is it's not good argumentation, right? Some of the conspiracy theories and things of
[00:18:32] that nature that emerged over the last couple years, we're not based on evidence of any form.
[00:18:39] So, okay, let's talk about this for a second because we've talked about the structure of
[00:18:43] group thing, the causes. What are some of the effects of it? Why so we kind of skirted around
[00:18:50] why it's important to talk about this but you want to make these things more explicit?
[00:18:55] I do. But wait, I want to hit the last three characteristics. Okay. Very quickly. So, the
[00:19:00] last three are and they sort of flow from the other. So with self-censorship, you then get an
[00:19:04] illusion of anonymity where it feels like everyone agrees, right? Because the people who don't agree
[00:19:11] kept their mouths shut. So there's the illusion of anonymity within the group.
[00:19:15] You also have direct pressure on dissenters. So the people who are voicing counterpoints
[00:19:21] are basically getting social pressure. They're being ostracized in some way. They're being
[00:19:27] told that they're not team player or that they need to get on board. And then the last piece
[00:19:33] is self-appointed mindguards, the phrase they use as self-appointed mindguards. But these
[00:19:37] are basically the people who appoint themselves as those responsible for putting that pressure
[00:19:44] on the dissenters, right? So you have people who sort of appoint themselves to police the discourse
[00:19:49] in the group and they think that that's their right to do. And so all of these are characteristics
[00:19:56] that we see in these classic group think environments. Right. Okay. So what's the
[00:20:01] outcome? What's the outcome? So the main focus, it's kind of interesting because
[00:20:09] the main focus of this entire group think literature is that the outcome is a lot of bad
[00:20:13] decisions. You know, you, the failure to discern easily discernible risks, like things that could
[00:20:21] blow up your decision, but you never considered them because of all these things filtering them
[00:20:27] out. Right. And again, the majority of this is based on classic examples of very bad decisions.
[00:20:35] But that's the biggest one is just suboptimal decision making in groups.
[00:20:40] But let's not, I mean, that's not gloss over this too hastily because in many situations,
[00:20:46] suboptimal decisions can lead to disastrous outcomes.
[00:20:50] Oh yeah.
[00:20:51] Especially when we're dealing with, what's his first name?
[00:20:54] Waik. Carl. Carl Waik. He talked about high reliability organizations like NASA.
[00:21:00] He was also talking about aircraft carriers as these high reliability organizations where
[00:21:05] everything has to be done in a very orderly fashion in order to ensure that
[00:21:11] that you make in the most optimal decisions on an ongoing basis because a suboptimal decision can
[00:21:18] very quickly deteriorate into very disastrous consequences like people dying, planes crashing.
[00:21:24] Yeah. Yeah, suboptimal decisions may be kind of tolerable in various domains, but in many other
[00:21:31] circumstances they can lead to critical consequences. Yeah, this is actually one of the key issues
[00:21:38] when we talk about this topic of group thinking. I think it's a real phenomenon, but there's also
[00:21:43] good evidence that says high cohesive groups outperform low cohesion groups. Right.
[00:21:49] Right. So there's lots of social science evidence saying that teams that are highly cohesive work better
[00:21:56] in general. Right. The issue is, the issue here that we're getting to with group think is
[00:22:03] they can perform better in general, but they open themselves up to this potential for
[00:22:11] catastrophic failure. Right. A potential for bad decision making even though in an operational
[00:22:16] sense they tend to be more effective. Okay, so this is where I think the devil is in the details.
[00:22:23] I think it depends on the nature of the cohesiveness and the type of the cohesiveness
[00:22:28] or uniformity of the group. So we looked at another paper in preparation for the day by
[00:22:35] Minson Barn 2021. We'll put the thing in the show notes if anybody's interested,
[00:22:39] they can look at it. But what they did which I thought was very useful was that
[00:22:43] they compare the contrast of group think, which is the phenomenon that we've talked about now,
[00:22:48] with two other group dynamics that they feel are as prominent and consequential. So the other one
[00:22:55] they talked about was polythink, which is almost like the polar opposite of group think. So instead
[00:23:01] of enhanced unanimity, you have a complete disparity of people and opinions. And the group
[00:23:08] lacks sufficient guiding logic and direction so that everybody is pulling in a different direction,
[00:23:14] which leads to massive amounts of noise in the decision making process and sort of a paralysis
[00:23:20] that doesn't allow the group to make a decision on anything. And that's a recipe for conflict
[00:23:28] and confusion. And ultimately possibly the adoption of the lowest common denominator
[00:23:35] is the way forward, which is of course not where you want to be as a business group or a
[00:23:40] military group or political party or what have you. So that's a complete lack of cohesion.
[00:23:46] And to them there's kind of a golden mean, a balance that you can strike or that you should
[00:23:52] aspire to strike anyway between group think, which is complete unanimity
[00:23:56] and polar thing, which is complete disparity on the other hand, which they call
[00:24:01] ConDiv, which stands for Sean, help me out. I believe it was convergence and divergence.
[00:24:07] So it's a model where you move back and forth between converging around common goals and objectives
[00:24:14] and diverging in strategies for pursuing those things. So this is a situation where you allow
[00:24:21] a certain degree of heterogeneity within the group. You allow for a multitude of voices and
[00:24:28] opinions. And you want to carefully scrutinize these opinions, but at the same time,
[00:24:33] you have a general direction that you set as a group that you need to stay within.
[00:24:39] And within these broad parameters, you allow for different opinions to be heard and considered,
[00:24:44] but you know sort of what it is that you want to achieve. You have a strategy,
[00:24:48] have an identity as a group that you're trying to fulfill and pursue.
[00:24:52] But in doing that, you do allow various options to be considered. So that is to them,
[00:24:58] the optimal group dynamic that allows groups to make the best decisions they can.
[00:25:05] Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good way to think about it. I don't know that I would
[00:25:10] I think group think has an explicitly, well maybe it's not explicit. No,
[00:25:16] I think it is explicitly negative connotation, right? But if we think about high cohesiveness
[00:25:21] versus low cohesiveness, the condiv and I think we have other measures that we might give in terms
[00:25:30] of combating group think that enables a group to get the benefits of cohesion while guarding against
[00:25:39] the dangers of group think and the disastrous outcomes that it can engender.
[00:25:45] Yeah. Can I put you on the spot for a minute?
[00:25:50] Sure. Because I don't know that I have an answer to the question. I agree that there's a real risk for
[00:25:57] groups, any type of groups and I think it's completely divorced from the individuals within
[00:26:02] the group, not completely but mostly divorced from the nature of the individuals within the group,
[00:26:07] the level of commitment or intelligence or expertise or any of these individual traits
[00:26:15] and characteristics. I do think that there's a real risk that's maybe part of human nature,
[00:26:21] maybe part of the nature of group dynamics involving human participants
[00:26:29] of slipping as you described from having a diversity of opinions that are tolerable and
[00:26:36] respected and debated in a rational objective way into a dynamic where
[00:26:43] that is not allowed anymore and you can have a facade of a conversation that seems on the surface
[00:26:50] to be intelligent and rational but in fact it is anything but. So my question is what do you feel
[00:26:56] are the main triggers that need to be pulled there or what are the main traps that we fall into
[00:27:04] that would make a group slip from having these healthy debates and conversations to this
[00:27:10] grouping situation? Yeah so I think the main triggers are the structural elements that you
[00:27:15] highlighted. So let's say group cohesiveness we've already said that can have lots of benefits
[00:27:22] so that's not inherently a negative condition that would necessarily lead to group think but
[00:27:30] absence of procedures, one of the things I'm going to argue is that I think procedures
[00:27:33] and discipline around exploration of alternatives winds up being really important so having procedures
[00:27:40] that say we are going to we're going to bring in a consideration of risks and a consideration of
[00:27:45] alternatives and that's just part of our process. So the absence of process or guidelines,
[00:27:54] the role of the leader can absolutely be detrimental here so that absence of an unbiased
[00:28:01] leader, a leader who's not open to the ideas of others so if you have a leader within the group
[00:28:07] who tends to be doing that policing type role of thought that's going to engender these bad
[00:28:15] outcomes. I have a couple other measures that I think are really key but I think those are
[00:28:21] the structural elements that create that risk. Oh and the last one which you might have
[00:28:30] different views on but the last one I think is that high degree of homogeneity if you have a group
[00:28:36] that's made up of people who have the same backgrounds, same professional expertise.
[00:28:43] One of the things I always joke about or I don't joke about it I say to my students
[00:28:47] when they're thinking about doing an IT project is they have to consider alternatives. Any good
[00:28:52] business case for an IT investment should include a discussion of alternatives and I mean
[00:28:57] a real discussion of alternatives. What traditionally happens in a lot of business cases is alternative
[00:29:03] one is we do the project and everything will be great and alternative two is we don't do anything
[00:29:09] and there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth you know it's not a real consideration of
[00:29:13] alternatives it's a straw man again but in a group where everyone has the same background
[00:29:19] and the same professional training and the same experiences they're going to tend to see the
[00:29:26] solutions all in the same way and so one of the things to get back to my point that I always argue
[00:29:32] to my students is any discussion of a possible IT investment and discussion of alternatives
[00:29:37] should include at least one non-technical solution and the reason is that if you've got a
[00:29:44] bunch of technologists around the room to the person with only a hammer everything looks
[00:29:48] like a nail right and so if you're if it's all technologists or all engineers
[00:29:53] then they're going to see the solution as an engineering solution or an engineering problem.
[00:30:00] Well and part of the thing there is that in a business setting every I would say every IT
[00:30:06] implementation project is designed to solve or address a business issue not an IT issue per se.
[00:30:13] Ideally right well although that often does get inverted. Okay yeah no I take your point but
[00:30:18] ideally that's what would happen and therefore yes it makes total sense to have this diversity of
[00:30:24] opinions of technical and non-technical people who would contribute to the decision making process
[00:30:29] so which goes back to the point that I made before which made you flinch which is that
[00:30:34] I think diversity has to be relevant right so if you're making decisions about an IT project
[00:30:41] in a business setting so you want to have people with different opinions about how businesses
[00:30:46] should run or how IT projects should be managed or what types of technology are really important
[00:30:51] maybe different you know strategic priorities or whatever the case might be other types of
[00:30:56] diversity might be less relevant they might be proxies for the type of types of diversities I
[00:31:02] mentioned before but they're not as significant. Yeah I don't know I don't know that I agree
[00:31:09] with that because I think lots of different types of diversity they might reflect fundamentally
[00:31:14] different perspectives on the problem right yeah but my point is that not every perspective
[00:31:19] is relevant to any type of problem. Yeah but you're assuming you're you're assuming that you know
[00:31:26] ahead of time what the relevant perspectives are going to be and I don't know that I don't think
[00:31:30] that's a valid assumption right IDEO you know the famous design firm IDEO so they design
[00:31:38] all kinds of different things right they design processes they design artifacts all kinds of
[00:31:43] different things and one of the things that's fascinating about that group is they tend to
[00:31:47] bring people in from you know very broad backgrounds you they have people from you know backgrounds
[00:31:54] in medicine they have people from backgrounds in anthropology engineering architecture so the more
[00:31:59] design oriented domains but also domains that don't seem to have much to do with design
[00:32:05] psychology sociology right so they they have people from all these different backgrounds
[00:32:11] because their assumption is that those perspectives might have some insight on a on an ill structured
[00:32:17] problem and all the problems of business today are wicked problems right they're problems that
[00:32:22] don't have a single right solution and so I don't think we can we can know ahead of time what
[00:32:28] are going to be the perspectives that matter for a given problem. I don't fundamentally
[00:32:33] disagree with what you're saying I I think it does make sense to have a diverse group of people
[00:32:42] that come from different intellectual traditions or professional domains or academic fields
[00:32:49] in order to tackle poorly poorly defined problems with with possible outcomes that are
[00:32:55] that are not well articulated or specified but I do think that there are various types of
[00:33:02] diversity that are that seem to be pushed into every conversation like diversity of color or race
[00:33:12] or gender which like I said before may be proxies for other types of diversity but this
[00:33:18] stagnation around these two or three types of diversity that have to be designed and built
[00:33:23] into every situation seems to be completely counterproductive. Yeah so but let's go ahead
[00:33:29] and have that conversation quickly I do think I think you're right that narrowly defining diversity
[00:33:38] only in phenotypic characteristics is a mistake right but I do think diversity along those axes
[00:33:46] can be valuable in and of themselves they can right so if if race or ethnicity
[00:33:56] is reflective of different experiences in life different you know experiences in community or
[00:34:03] something like that those differences could be valuable in terms of adding perspective
[00:34:08] to to understand a problem and to sit with a problem right we talked about a couple several
[00:34:14] months back about how with ESG you know firms that have female CEOs tend to be better on their
[00:34:23] ESG investment well that seems to be kind of interesting right like that says that something
[00:34:29] about that diversity along that dimension of sex might give really different perspectives right
[00:34:36] really add to the perspectives considered within the group and and so I do think there's real
[00:34:42] value in those positions I agree with you that defining diversity only in terms of demographic
[00:34:51] characteristics or phenotypic characteristics I think is a mistake because it means that you overlook
[00:34:57] other types of diversity that could be equally valuable this makes me think of another thing
[00:35:04] that I is highly relevant I believe to these situations which is organizational learning
[00:35:09] or the capacity for a group or an organization to learn and if anybody's interested this
[00:35:15] is based on work by Argeris and Chris Argeris and Donald Schoen I don't know that I pronounced
[00:35:21] the name properly but S-A-S-C-H-O-N they published a number of papers and a couple of books I believe
[00:35:29] as well on organizational learning and they have this idea of single loop and double loop
[00:35:34] learning which I think many people have heard about and it strikes me that single loop learning
[00:35:40] kind of maps on to this phenomenon of group thing because what it does at best is when we try to
[00:35:47] accomplish something and we get a disappointing outcome or a suboptimal outcome or an unexpected
[00:35:53] outcome what we can do at best through single loop learning is take some sort of corrective
[00:35:59] action right so we let's say we have a group of salespeople and they fail to meet their
[00:36:05] quarterly quota and so the best we can do as a group or as an organization through single loop
[00:36:12] learning is we hire most salespeople to make sure that the quota is met in the next quarter.
[00:36:18] This can only take you so much, just so long right or so far. Real learning or like effective
[00:36:25] learning organizations engage in what's called double loop learning where you don't just
[00:36:30] take corrective action but they actually reflect on the basic assumptions that underpin
[00:36:36] your objectives in the first place. Why do we want to meet this quota? Maybe we actually need to
[00:36:43] produce other products or deliver other services or get into a new market or deal with
[00:36:48] different types of customers or we actually reflect on the strategy of the business and what it
[00:36:52] is that we're trying to achieve, what is our identity, what do we stand for, what is our
[00:36:56] mission and so on and so forth. And in order to be able to ask these questions, you cannot be locked
[00:37:04] up in this dynamic of group thing. You have to be able to break away from it. You have to be able
[00:37:09] and that goes back to what they were talking about in their writing to have uncomfortable conversations
[00:37:16] where your assumptions, your beliefs get challenged on the basis of objective information
[00:37:23] and rational conversations irrespective of who you are as an individual who happens to espouse
[00:37:29] these views or have these beliefs or these views or these perspectives. Yeah, I think that's
[00:37:37] very valuable. I think you're right that the whole single loop, double loop learning and
[00:37:41] subsequent research like organizational ambidexterity, we should do a whole episode on that I think
[00:37:49] but that's a more contemporary articulation of some of those same principles.
[00:37:54] Relates very closely to what we're talking about here. Again, this issue of balance becomes
[00:38:01] really important because why do organizations slip into single loop learning? It's more efficient.
[00:38:08] It's much more efficient to just keep going forward in the short term at least. So efficiency
[00:38:16] or again, two other words that gets used in this literature, exploration and exploitation.
[00:38:22] Exploitation meaning you take advantage of the things you already know. Whereas exploration
[00:38:27] is you try to learn new things. You try to bring in people with different insights and learn new
[00:38:32] things. Well, most organizations tend toward exploitation. They learn how to do certain
[00:38:36] things if they're successful doing it. They keep doing those things because the efficiency is high.
[00:38:42] So the point is you also don't want to get tip the balance so far the other way where
[00:38:46] it's all exploration or all self-reflection or organizational reflection and not much performance.
[00:38:53] That issue of balance is really important. But I agree and I think it's also market dependent
[00:39:00] or environment dependent because if you're a business that operates in an industry that
[00:39:05] happens to be slow moving and kind of stagnant in terms of the technologies that they use or
[00:39:12] I mean, let's take we both work at universities so we can talk about them as an industry. The
[00:39:20] higher ed industries is pretty slow moving I would say right? Not much has changed in the last 30,
[00:39:28] 40, 50 years in terms of how universities are structured, how they deliver content,
[00:39:33] how they interact with students, how they hire people and so on and so forth.
[00:39:37] Yeah, slow moving is an understatement there. Yeah and so the level of competition is not
[00:39:42] intense so there's not this innate or urgent need to keep innovate and explore
[00:39:48] and many universities both in your country in the US and in Australia where I am,
[00:39:56] they're extremely financially successful without having to change much.
[00:40:00] Competition is getting high in the US I can tell you that. It is now especially with
[00:40:04] the whole ed tech industry that's booming but up until this moment that really wasn't the case.
[00:40:12] But then you can think of other industries or markets that are I would say hyper competitive
[00:40:17] like if you think of the mobile phone sector where you have models coming out
[00:40:25] every year or even faster than that, you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again
[00:40:30] expect to be successful because somebody is going to come and eat your lunch.
[00:40:34] Yeah I think that's true even in mature markets though. You're right it's more obvious
[00:40:39] in dynamic markets but even in mature markets the potential for disruption is there
[00:40:46] if there's money to be made, right? There's a potential for disruption and I think
[00:40:50] you have seen this, right? We've seen this in lots of different industries where
[00:40:55] they're very mature marketplaces but somebody comes in doing things in a fundamentally different way
[00:41:02] and disruptive innovation is again another topic that's probably for another time but
[00:41:08] there's lots of evidence that those disruptors can't emerge even in mature markets.
[00:41:15] Although I'm curious because group think the way it's described leads to sub-optimal
[00:41:22] decisions but it doesn't necessarily and correct me if you think otherwise but it doesn't necessarily
[00:41:28] leads to decisions that are more conservative in nature that lead to exploitation versus
[00:41:33] exploration. In fact I believe that they sometimes lead to very risky decisions is that not the case?
[00:41:41] No I think you could be right. This is why I would say we want to be careful not to
[00:41:46] relate the different phenomena too much. I think there are obviously points of commonality
[00:41:51] and interesting dynamics that connect them but yeah I think lots of cases of group think have been
[00:41:57] about things like launching a new product that was, you know, did not have a market,
[00:42:04] did not have high desire that existed out there in the marketplace but people did it because
[00:42:09] of the group dynamics within the decision-making group. Yeah so I guess that's a fair point
[00:42:16] it doesn't necessarily lead to decisions that tend to be overly conservative or overly risky but
[00:42:22] rather decisions that have not been thoroughly and properly thought through and that could go in the
[00:42:27] direction. Yeah, yeah exactly. Now did you want to talk about social media?
[00:42:35] Oh yeah so to me the dynamic that we see the group think that we're seeing emerging at
[00:42:42] societal levels has gotten worse and I think part of it is the phenomenon of filter bubbles right so
[00:42:48] you know social media platforms are designed their addiction engines right that their whole
[00:42:53] purpose is to keep you clicking and we know from the psychological foundations of things
[00:43:00] like group think that people particularly when they have a group affiliation want to stay in
[00:43:05] that group and they will do everything to stay in that group but that also means that they're
[00:43:11] made uncomfortable by things that contradict the the stances of their group and because of the design
[00:43:18] of social media that can actually be filtered out right so this is what a filter bubble is it
[00:43:23] means that you tend to see the things that the the social media platform knows you want to click
[00:43:28] on well what are those things those are the things you already agree with which means the
[00:43:33] things you disagree with or the things that might challenge your worldview you just don't see them
[00:43:39] right or you see them much less and that is it I mean when we talk about insulation of the group
[00:43:47] being one of the preconditions and illusion of unanimity there's this there's this famous story
[00:43:55] I think it was I'm trying to think of who it was it might have been an old socialite Peggy
[00:43:59] Guggenheim or something like that who was at a dinner party and I think it was when Richard Nixon
[00:44:05] was elected she was at a dinner party and she said I honestly don't know how this man could
[00:44:09] be elected I don't know anyone who voted for him you know her so her perception is this one tiny
[00:44:15] little circle that she ran in represented the universe right which is one of the reasons why in
[00:44:19] our own political discourse it drives me crazy when politicians of both parties use this phrase
[00:44:26] where they speak for the American people the American people want this the American people
[00:44:30] want that well maybe your American people want it but there are other American people who
[00:44:34] want something else you know and this this illusion of unanimity I think really does get reinforced
[00:44:43] by the design of contemporary social media platforms in a way that you know John Hyte
[00:44:51] the psychologist at NYU has written about this quite convincingly you know it makes you think
[00:45:00] everyone already sees the world like you do and then you then you do engage in self-censorship
[00:45:05] because you don't want to be ostracized you don't want to be the person called out
[00:45:08] if you float an alternative idea. So this is similar to another phenomenon that was raised by
[00:45:18] the authors of another paper we looked at Harrell at all 2021 and again we'll put the thing
[00:45:24] in the show notes if anybody's interested they can click the link there but they
[00:45:29] so they're economists and they look at looked at group thing from that perspective which I
[00:45:35] thought was really interesting because they describe it as a more rational phenomenon than
[00:45:40] maybe psychologists would think of and they talk about this idea of information correlation
[00:45:45] the information correlation problem whereas that where you have a large group of people
[00:45:49] that you interact with and I'm not talking about 10 or 20 or 30 I'm talking about thousands
[00:45:54] of people that we get exposed to through social media platforms what they're saying is that even
[00:45:59] though each agent its individuals private signals are independent at least partially from those of
[00:46:04] other people the actions of people become correlated over time as they get exposed
[00:46:10] to all this information coming at them from other people this happens because every individual
[00:46:16] tends to infer that if another person takes a certain action it must be optimal based on
[00:46:21] based on that person person's private information so we tend to think that other people are rational
[00:46:28] and because other people tend to act in similar ways and that has to do with the design of
[00:46:34] social media then we sort of follow what they're doing and what I mean by the design of social
[00:46:40] media is the the over emphasis on peripheral cues that have to do with the people that
[00:46:47] communicate in the information like how many followers they have how many likes a certain post
[00:46:53] gets and retweets and all these different things that say really nothing directly about the quality
[00:46:59] of the content but just about the popularity of it and who said it so I think these these
[00:47:06] structural design properties of these platforms really exacerbate the problem of what they
[00:47:12] call the correlation problem which which is extremely relevant to groupthink
[00:47:17] yeah absolutely they they argue they that particular article was titled rational groupthink
[00:47:25] but it I think they make it clear that it's not leading to better decisions right it can
[00:47:29] still lead to wrong outcomes bad for sure for sure yeah um but just that it is rational in
[00:47:36] a certain sense on the part of individuals in observing it which I mean to a degree
[00:47:41] all of groupthink is rational in a certain regard right like people do want to be in groups we are
[00:47:47] social animals human beings don't want to be on the outside they don't want to be the the uh
[00:47:53] lone wolf or whatnot I mean there are certain individuals who who like that but the vast
[00:47:58] majority of us want to be in groups and that's why the tendency towards self-censorship
[00:48:05] to maintain group harmony can be so dangerous because sure it's rational it's it's I mean it's
[00:48:11] very fundamentally rational in a certain sense why are human beings like that because uh people who
[00:48:17] didn't care about the group tended to die off right not to get all by the lewisnery biology
[00:48:22] here yeah right like the people who got uh uh ostracized from their group their clan whatever
[00:48:29] it was died right and so there is a very rational undergirding for all of this but it's still dysfunctional
[00:48:39] certainly from an organizational perspective it can be dysfunctional albeit rational yes so I mean
[00:48:46] the rationality is clear in so far as we're talking about the need for the the evolutionary
[00:48:50] need for self-preservation and the heightened chances of being able to self preserve if
[00:48:56] we're part of the larger community that you know collectively looks after the provision of
[00:49:00] resources and the acquisition of resources and protection from outside threats and so on and so
[00:49:06] forth but I guess what we're seeing here is kind of an ironic twist of of fate where
[00:49:13] over protection over the unanimity and the structure of the group might lead to
[00:49:17] outcomes that are actually dangerous for its existence and and ongoing maintenance
[00:49:22] right right yes yeah I think that's exactly right the point is just that some of that's hard wired
[00:49:28] right I mean it it's built in for us yeah which is why it's still happening despite everything
[00:49:35] that we know about you know everything we've talked about the the causes the structures the
[00:49:39] effects we all know it but we all psychologically and evolutionarily wired to be part of these
[00:49:45] communities and tribes anyway shall we shall we wrap it up yeah I think so there's actually
[00:49:53] so much more there's so much more I would love to just sort of explore we in some of the things we did
[00:49:58] but we can't go on forever so in terms of guidance for managers I think there's a couple that jump
[00:50:05] out at me and I'll be curious to see if you have others or disagree with any of mine
[00:50:10] um one the idea of and some of this actually goes right back to Janice's early writing
[00:50:17] the idea that a leader should hesitate to make too strong a normative position on on a decision
[00:50:26] right when a decision is being explored by a group the leader a good leader
[00:50:33] should hesitate to give their own opinion because that will immediately set an anchor
[00:50:37] that others will try to grab to right so that one the role of a devil's advocate we have joked about
[00:50:45] the concept of a devil's advocate before where I told you the history of it in don't do it again
[00:50:50] you sound like Sheldon when you do that I won't do it again but the idea of a devil's advocate
[00:50:56] we're having an appointed an appointed individual within a group whose job is to argue against
[00:51:04] the preferred position either gives a great sure methodological answer right now you probably
[00:51:10] have to rotate that around because if that person's always the devil's advocate then those group
[00:51:15] dynamics are going to be like well let's get rid of Sean he's always the one saying
[00:51:20] you know arguing against the group I would say it shouldn't be it shouldn't be one person
[00:51:26] uh and you can think about war but I think it has to be appointed no well you war gaming
[00:51:31] I think you need to have a group of people to build a position that the competes against the
[00:51:38] majority position or that the position that the group seems to be gravitating towards
[00:51:42] I think that's yeah that's crucial yeah yeah we've already talked about enhancing the enhancing
[00:51:49] the diversity of a group making sure that you have people from different backgrounds different
[00:51:54] perspectives contributing to the deliberations I think creating an environment of I think the
[00:52:02] phrase that's often used is psychological safety one of the things that sometimes gets critiqued in
[00:52:08] academia is this idea of a safe space I don't think we're talking about that here we're talking
[00:52:12] about spaces where people have to be open to having their own ideas challenged but feeling
[00:52:17] like they can offer a contradictory point without feeling like they're going to be punished
[00:52:22] or stating that other perspective is really important it's almost it's almost the opposite of
[00:52:27] what the way we use the phrase in academia it's not the psychological safety to to make sure that
[00:52:33] other people don't disagree with you but rather it's the safety to disagree with people without
[00:52:38] being recommended for having done that right yeah right yeah yeah and making sure that you're
[00:52:44] building an environment where people feel like they can they can offer a contradictory
[00:52:49] point of view the last point is just a method you know this idea of absence of method I think
[00:52:55] ensuring that there is a method within your organizations yeah for doing things like risk
[00:53:03] assessment making sure you're doing a thorough and disciplined risk assessment and not a
[00:53:09] you know hand-waving type approach to risk assessment yeah so having distinct methods
[00:53:15] for these things I think winds up being really important it's kind of it's building a sort of
[00:53:20] discipline so I agree with everything you've said I don't know if it's surprising or not I would add
[00:53:27] maybe kind of a higher level observation and opinion which is that organizations would be
[00:53:34] well advised in thinking about how to instill these principles of critique and questioning
[00:53:41] and thorough examination of different alternatives they would be well advised to move beyond
[00:53:46] thinking about individuals as group members but to think about processes that need to be built
[00:53:52] into to inform group dynamics and that's because individuals come and go and individuals and I
[00:54:00] think you would agree I think there's plenty of science and research behind this we are inherently
[00:54:05] irrational beings that's just the way that we wired so don't disagree with me yet hold on
[00:54:12] let me finish you'll have plenty of time to disagree with me in a minute and there are
[00:54:19] other kinds of systems like academia ideally anyway that are structured in a way that's
[00:54:28] designed to cancel or partial out individual subjectivities and irrationalities and biases
[00:54:35] in order to achieve an optimal output as a system right that's why we have
[00:54:42] again ideally I know that the system has many critiques many of them many of these critiques
[00:54:47] are worn out but ideally you know double blind reviews for instance right this is in the service
[00:54:55] of ensuring that the output that we produce as a system is objective and rational rather than
[00:55:02] an expression of one person or two people's subjective opinions about whatever the topic
[00:55:06] might be so all this is to say that the main point that I want to emphasize here is that we need
[00:55:11] to move beyond individuals and you know I think I take your point and I agree with it but we
[00:55:15] want to make sure that you know the leader doesn't preempt anything by expressing too strong
[00:55:20] an opinion at the beginning of a conversation for instance but leaders common go they change and
[00:55:26] different people have different personalities and my observation has been looking at different
[00:55:31] types of organizations learning organizations that ongoing lindigate or are able to fend off this
[00:55:38] idea of groupthink and engage in you know a sober examination of their basic assumptions
[00:55:46] and suppositions like this double loop learning that we talked about before these are organizations
[00:55:50] that have processes built into their way of operation that ensure that things happen
[00:55:57] in the way that you described them before like a real thorough review of alternatives
[00:56:03] risk assessment of these different alternatives but they actually entail how long is it going
[00:56:06] to take to pursue them what kind of resources we're going to have to to have in order to
[00:56:10] make sure that they happen we're going to have to reorganize or hire new people
[00:56:15] what would it would do to our financial performance and and so on and so forth we have to be able to
[00:56:20] do that in a way that I think transcends anyone individuals goodwill and motivation at any given
[00:56:28] point in time yeah so I agree I was only going to roll my eyes when you said we're not rational
[00:56:34] I think I would go with the herp simon line of bounded rationality but yeah so we're
[00:56:39] rational in small chunks but yes I don't disagree with anything you've said there I think we're
[00:56:45] going to subsequently have a discussion about this idea of sort of the heroic leader and whether
[00:56:49] or not that's a real thing but absolutely that a focus on process is critical and it's fundamentally
[00:56:59] a systems thinking type approach yep all right okay good discussion or it was good talking to you
[00:57:08] and let's do it again soon sounds good