Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Working Together in the Desert

For 32 years now, I’ve been conducting a decision-making game with my Ripon College students and with various mid-career groups. The game challenges participants to decide on the relative usefulness of fifteen items for survival in the desert after a plane crash. Participants first rank the items on their own and then rank them again in groups of six to eight. They then compare their own lists and their group’s list with the rankings of the military survival experts who concocted the game in the first place.

The game is supposed to demonstrate the advantages of group decision-making over individual decision-making in a situation like this. I have probably facilitated this game with more than 3,000 people since 1980, and every single time I have done it the group scores have been higher than the individual scores somewhere between 65% and 80% of the time. Every time I did it, I told the participants that someday the individuals would do better than the groups, but that never happened. Until last week in my introductory course, Leadership and the Human Spirit.

After trying unsuccessfully to figure out why this happened, I chalked it up to the law of averages and accepted the fact that it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Though the scores were out of kilter this time, the students and I were able to identify the reasons why groups normally do better than individuals on this game and why, in a minority of cases, individuals do better than the group. It helps to start with the observation that the decisions in this game are all about common everyday items and thus do not require complex knowledge of high-tech stuff. Everybody has some idea of what the items on the list can do but most people have never thought about them in a context like this.

At any rate, the explanations are apt for our Leading Together blog, so here goes.

The first reason why groups normally do better than individuals is that two heads are indeed better than one, and six or eight heads are better than two. More viewpoints mean more ideas.

The second reason is that people in isolation are unable to appreciate their own mistakes; but if someone else is present then mistakes become easier to detect. Group decision-making can weed out mistakes as well as contribute more ideas.

The third reason is that the process of communication is creative and tends to transform original ideas into better ideas as people express themselves, reflect on other people’s ideas, and consider new alternatives. Ideas piggyback on other ideas. Communication is not just a process of expressing what we know we know; it is often a process of finding out what we can learn.

And why do groups not always make better decisions than individuals? Well, they all have something to do with the non-rational and social influences on our decisions. When members of a group are unclear about the rational or logical reasons for a decision, they look to other cues.

If, for example, someone in the group speaks up quickly and confidently, as we expect leaders to do, we assume they know what they are talking about – unless, of course, we know they are wrong. In that case, we may be reluctant to follow their lead the next time.

The other two reasons are polar opposites of the same proposition. If we have or would like to have a positive relationship with someone in the group who advocates a particular position, we are likely to side with that person if we are unsure of any better reason. And if we just can’t stand someone in the group, we are likely to seek other options rather than agree with them. It may not matter if those other options make little sense as long as they satisfy our desire to avoid being on the same side of the fence as the person we just don’t like.

This is not to suggest that emotional factors and personal relationships are inherently bad; they are in fact extremely important within any group and they contribute to the commitment of members to try out and stick with the group’s decisions. And in fact, the best decisions are sometimes the ones we feel committed to whether they are rationally and objectively better than other decisions.

The classic example of that is a marriage. There is no way to verify that one’s spouse is literally the best choice in the world, but a strong commitment to the relationship from both partners can make for a happy and durable marriage.

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