Does collective intelligence always live up to its potential or does it turn into group-thinking? What is the difference?
According to Aristotle, “when there are many who contribute to the process of deliberation, each can bring his share of goodness and moral prudence…some appreciate one part, some another, and altogether appreciate all.” However, for Aristotle’s theory to always work, we need two things to happen: first, each in the group should think individually and contribute to the discussion and second, everyone in the group should be able to rightly interpret each other’s opinion.
Errors in decision-making:
It can get challenging at times to achieve these things in a team setting. When the team deviates from this collective intelligence goal in decision-making, we call it group thinking.
Let’s take the situation above. Mr. Zeta, the first confident speaker says “A is the best solution”. Although, Ms. Alpha initially thought “C is a better solution”, she goes with confident Mr. Zeta. Mr. Delta, who initially thought “D is a better solution” as well, also goes with the majority now. There can be 2 possibilities here: either Mr. Zeta is right i.e. A is indeed the best solution or Mr. Zeta is wrong i.e. A is not necessarily the best solution. In either case, this is a problematic situation. Let’s see why.
Case 1: Mr. Zeta is right
If Mr. Zeta is right, Ms. Alpha and Mr. Delta are simply echoing Mr. Zeta’s opinion. In this case, the team is losing on the possibility of exploring solutions C and D, which could very well be good solutions. The team is taking a polarized opinion that A is the ONLY solution. Also, the team ends up focussing on a single commonly known idea which is known to all which is A is a good solution. The team is ignoring the idea of C and D.
Case 2: Mr. Zeta is wrong
If Mr. Zeta is wrong, Ms. Alpha and Mr. Delta are amplifying that error by not voicing out their opinion. Also, because Ms. Alpha is echoing Mr.Zeta’s opinion, Mr. Delta is also forced to go with the majority. The original ideas of Ms. Alpha and Mr. Delta subsided here.
How can we bring the collective intelligence back i.e. like this?
- Mr. Zeta is to be silent or the last speaker
Mr. Zeta could be someone who is more confident than the rest of the group. He could be someone who wields more power. He could simply be the leader of the group. In all these cases, if Mr. Zeta can go last or be a silent spectator, the rest of the participants can bring in their individual diverse ideas.
2. Go anonymous in collecting and contributing the ideas before the meeting
The team can have a process to collect the ideas and opinions in anonymous mode offline before the group discussion. Then the group can come together to brainstorm these ideas focussing more on ideas rather than on who wrote them.
3. Assign areas of focus for the individual members
In this case, for example, Ms. Alpha can have a specific focus area where she can provide the ideas whereas Mr. Delta and Mr. Zeta can have their focus areas respectively. Then Ms. Alpha and Mr.Delta do not have to echo Mr. Zeta’s opinion always.
Herd mentality i.e. group-thinking can be toxic to any team culture. It impacts the decisions the team makes and their overall product strategies in the long run. Hence it is important to find ways to bring out the individual thinking from the team. This way we can truly achieve the objective of diversity in the team.
