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“Groupthink leads to deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement.” – Irving Janis

Steve highlights the conditions that foster group think.  He discussed the devil’s advocate.  He teaches the perfection game and discusses the history of brainstorming and how realistic it is.  Did you know people will go through polarizing amplification of bias in groups?  Listen in as we discuss anchoring and idea generation to produce higher quality of ideas using 6-5-3 and Delphi techniques.

Show Notes:

1. Host: Ron Smith
2. Contact: steve@cottagestreetconsulting.com
3. LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/agilesteve
4. Music: www.hooksounds.com

Use the comment section below to comment on the interview.

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Ron is a Project Manager with Chalder Consulting Inc. www.chalder.ca

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rondsmith

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Transcription of Interview

Ron: Welcome to the managing projects podcast. My name is Ron Smith your host. Today I have Steve Martin with me and Steve has appeared on the show once before. He and I spoke about troubled project recovery and he works with teams in the agile space. So if you haven’t heard that episode that’s a fantastic one to go listen to. So today’s episode we are going to be talking about groupthink and ineffective brainstorming. So welcome back Steve.

Steve: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you inviting me back to the show. Especially with this topic of group think and ineffective brainstorming because it’s so related to the troubled projects that we’ve talked about.

Ron: It is and there was a temptation that I had to go into that. So I’m glad to have you back because this is a topic that could take its own episode.

Steve: Yeah so when it comes to groupthink the term was coined actually in the early 70s by a researcher Irving Janis. What he noticed is there are certain situations where groups of people just make really bad decisions. And one of the quotes that he had from his research he was a little bit pessimistic and I just love some of the words that he used because it really paints a picture. So to quote him and from his study… basically groupthink happens when you’ve got a group that makes bad or faulty decisions because of group pressure. And when you’ve got that group pressure it really leads to a deterioration of… and this is the quote: deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgment. He is not mincing words he’s just basically say these groups when they get together they’re so into it they just really ignore alternatives. They are convinced they’re right. And when you have these decisions that are shaped by group think they really have a low probability of success. So he’s really pointed with these words there. There are certain conditions that tend to foster some group think and that’s when you’ve got folks that might have a similar background. And what I mean by this is folks that all come from the same university or from the same program. So if you got folks that are from a same regional area, singular gender, singular race or ethnicity or a singular background. Anything like that, that tends to foster some group think. Some other conditions are if they’re insulated are just completely protected or siloed from outside opinions. They’re just on their own they’re just doing their thing. They are empowered. They’re on their way. They’ve got no clear rules to make decisions. They’re just going to go for it. But even when you have those three things whether it’s similar backgrounds they’re insulated, or siloed and they have no clear rules, what really cements it together is that they have a high degree of pressure to produce something and there is a low motive low motivation or a low incentive to realistically look at things outside of what they already know. They’re under pressure. They have to drive to results and they have to drive the results right now. And so, they’re not going to take the time to look outside of their circle to get those opinions. And making sure diversity doesn’t mean just to have one token person on that team.

Steve: When you do this, you actually have to create the team in a way that is going to enable those diverse opinions to actually be heard and be considered. And so just having one person on there that’s just not going to do it.

Ron: Can you talk a little bit about the whole devil’s advocate. Does that play into the group think.

Steve: Yeah. So when you start taking a look at raising alternative opinions or alternative suggestions again if you’re under high pressure you tend to get more of the groans in the room. If you’ve got a group that says I don’t even want to be in this meeting in the first place I just want to do my job. Why are we hear? So every person that speaks up is just preventing me from doing what I really want to be doing. Whether it’s coding or designing or whatever it is. I’ve seen some groups put in things like well we’re going to have a mandatory devil’s advocate. All right this week that you’re going to be the mandatory designated devil’s advocate. You need to actually have someone who has a genuine Devil’s Advocate perspective and be able to argue it with a degree of interest and a degree of coming from the place of wanting to make this better. And that’s why there is there’s this concept of what one of my colleagues called being a skunk at the garden party which is very similar to like a devil’s advocate. But this is somebody that’s personally vested. Sometimes I invite these people to these meetings and people look at me like why would you invite this person. Because I know: A) that they may not like me, and B) they have an opinion. And I think if you invite this person and you can have them bring a friend, so it’s not like six people on one, where you can create the atmosphere of pros and cons to have a collaboration as opposed to just a combat. You can get to where it is that you need to go. But here is my advice to that skunk at the garden party. Don’t go in there with the attitude of I’m going to disagree with everything that you’ve got to say because chances are there is going to be at least one or two things that skunk actually agrees with. Start with that. Hey I like this or I like this. I think that’s in the right direction. I do something called the perfection game. This is what I learned from my mentor when I was learning how to facilitate the perfection game is this. I like this… what would make this perfect… would be if you also did… or what would make this perfect is… if you just tweaked this this way. And so it’s that old game of replacing but I love this. “But” there goes the flags. And the reason why I think that is this… now are people going to listen to that 100 percent of the time? No it’s going to be one of those trust things that over time you’re going to build. But I’ve actually had skunks at the dinner party turned into actually advocates for the team over time.

Ron: They’re a great advocate. Right. Because, they are someone who’s been turned and who was not shy to be talking about the topic in the first place.

Steve: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ron: So we got group think and then in the midst of that we have brainstorming so how did you brainstorming knowing that you don’t want group think.

Steve: So when you start to think about the history of brainstorming… the brainstorming idea actually came from an ad executive from the 1950s. And so that’s how long this this quote concept has been around and 70 years later folks are still trying to hang onto the concept that brainstorming is the way to go to generate new ideas. What this guy Alex Osborne said in the 1950s when it came to brainstorming was throw out as many ideas as possible don’t worry about feasibility about the craziness build on ideas and don’t criticize. But what we found when we do this it actually doesn’t work so well. Actually the research that has been basically proven time and time again is that brainstorming to generate ideas in this manner. Groups that do this actually come up with less ideas and have lower quality than if you were just to sit there by yourself and come up with ideas in a silo. All by yourself. Yeah so brainstorming actually yields some really poor results. Which is really… it’s just one of those things of when you start looking at groupthink and you start looking at individualistic behavior. There’s actually four behaviors that as individuals it actually impacts the group. And if you’re doing a group brainstorming session these things really take into account. Like for example: if you have an individual bias against something or towards something when you get into a group whatever that bias is going to be amplified. And so, whenever you start talking about a certain idea or concept you can have that bias as an individual but when you start talking about it with that group and especially if you’re like minded you’re going to become more polarized in that view. This was really kind of interesting. In one of the studies that one of the researchers did this was back in just around 2015 or so they called it the Colorado experiment because they held this in Colorado. The researchers did a study of a fairly controversial medical procedure and they gave a poll to two different groups of folks from Colorado Springs which tend to be more conservative than folks from Boulder Colorado which tend to be more liberal and so they answered their views as individuals about this medical procedure. Then what they did is they got people together like in a town hall if you’re from Colorado Springs you went here if you’re from Boulder you went there and then you started to discuss with people of like minded views. They went back and as individuals they took that same poll again. They found that the results became more polarized. And so I thought that was kind of interesting. So if you are in a group of folks and you start going down a certain direction you’re trying to brainstorm. You’re going to go into that direction of whatever that bias is. Because the third thing we are saying that we find especially when you start doing brainstorming as a group right out of the gate is that there’s this concept of anchoring. Whoever says the first statement… that’s an anchor, and the next statements that come after that are in relationship to whatever that first statement is. And so, whatever that first statement is – that’s that’s where you’re going to follow. And typically, the fourth thing is that wherever that anchor comes in is typically something that they know already. It’s something that they know. So it’s they’re going to emphasize something that’s a prevailing concept that they already know.

Ron: Everybody gets.

Steve: Yeah we get this. We don’t have to talk about it. We know this and we’re going to anchor over here. And so that’s why we come up with different techniques to make brainstorming a little bit better. And that’s where I try to say let’s change the word from brainstorming. What if we called it something like idea generation and there’s so many different places where we do idea generation. Over the course of either a project or creating a product idea generation comes probably mostly in some sort of requirements or features or figuring out whatever it is that our customer needs. There’s a lot of ideas that come up with that same thing with design. There’s a lot of things that come up with that. How we test. There’s a lot of ideas that come up with that and so we always go in with what it is that we know and you’re going to follow the actions a statement of whatever prevailing bias needed to go into that direction anyway. You’re just really missing the idea generation concept is how do you do something new or innovative if you’re just going to go down the route that you’ve always been. No matter if you say we’re going to do this different.

Ron: So what does idea generation look like. How would you run a group through that process.

Steve: Well there’s a couple of different ways that you can do this. When I work with organizations that are looking at products or are trying to think of what’s the next set of features or whatever it is that our customers want. I tend to do it in a two stage process in the first stage. It’s about generating ideas as an individual. And then the second stage is sharing those ideas that you came up with us as as an individual, grouping those ideas, and then figuring out prioritizing which group should we go after first. And so when you go into for example an agile work room there’s a reason why there’s a lot of techniques of them using posted notes. Because as an individual, if he can write ideas down one by one as an individual and then you throw them up on a wall you will actually get more ideas higher quality and of greater diversity than if you were just to shout them out and only have one or two or three people really drive the conversation.

Ron: That is how I do my risk identification on projects you’ve posted notes people write it down quick. They have a very short time frame. Then we’re done. We’re done writing it down to the point everybody has written down maybe three or four minutes.

Steve: Yeah and I typically limit it to around a four minute time period. And then once they’re on the wall the next thing that I do is and this is the tough part. Silently. Silently, have the whole group of nine or 10 people whoever came up with the ideas go up to the wall and start group them into certain groupings that they come up with. So if there’s a theme of risks about a technology stack – okay those will group them over here. If there’s risks around resources okay we’ll put it around here. If there’s risks around certain dates or market drivers okay we’ll put them over here. If you have them do it silently. And that’s the trick. You start tapping into other forms of communication. And I know this is really crunchy granola. Yes I was born in California. But what happens here is you start to look at people’s body language and how they’re reacting to things and when they can’t talk and you get to see how tense somebody’s body is and they just want to put it here but you’re not letting me put it to you get to observe that and you can have a discussion about those things. So the third part of the exercise is coming together and saying oh right these are the groupings. Do these make sense. But if there are things that people feel very strongly against that’s the conversation I want to have I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on stuff we already agree. Then of course the last step is OK of all these things here which ones do we feel are most important. There’s a couple of different voting techniques that you can do. Dot voting or a secret ballot voting or put it into a survey monkey and do a survey monkey. There’s a bunch of different things that you can do. I like dot voting because you just get it done and done. It’s right there in the room.

Ron: So one of your presentations you mentioned the 6 3 5 technique.

Steve: Basically imagine you’ve got a group of six people. Each person has a sheet of flip chart paper in front of them. So we’ve got six pieces of flip chart paper. Six people. And so what you do is you put one person in front of each flip chart and you say OK here is the problem that we want to solve. All six of us want to solve the same problem. OK. As an individual write down three or so ideas and stick it on your sheet of paper. Give them a minute or two to do that. So at the end of that minute or two each sheet of paper should have roughly three sticky notes on it. Then everybody says Okay take one step to the right. So I’m now looking at the person who just put three ideas up there before me. OK we’re going to do this again take another minute or two. Look at those three ideas don’t consider your ideas. Leave them there. Consider these three ideas that somebody else came up with and start building off of those three. You have two minutes to build off those three. And so at the end of that second round you now have six ideas. Take another step to the right. Okay. Now you’re looking at six ideas from the first two people in front of you. Again don’t look at what people done before leave that behind. Look at those six ideas that you have right now and add three more to it. Build off of what they have. And so when you do this you’re taking five steps to the right. That’s for that five comes from and that 6 3 5. You come back to your original sheet of paper. You now have 18 ideas. All built off of your original three and you’ve got six people times 18. You have roughly just under 110 ideas. In about 15 minutes. Then you can start getting into the grouping exercise. Then you could start getting into the voting exercise. But this is another idea generation technique building off of previous people’s ideas. Now I tend to do something like this if we’ve got more of a completely blue sky or green field are completely hey everything is wide open. I sometimes do this if I want to get role clarity for people on a team. OK. Business analysts these are your roles project managers. These are your roles. If you’ve got a team member this is your role. If you’ve got a quality person this is your role if you’re somebody representing the business this is your role. Each person would have their own flip chart piece of paper. So it’s just again one of those ways to very quickly come up with ideas from multiple perspectives.

Ron: So the first time we had you on we talked about troubled project recovery that was a really great. And I almost jumped into the group think topic then, so connect for me this whole group think in the midst of this troubled project recovery.

Steve: Yeah. So I typically like to use the Delphi Technique which is the coming up with a number of ideas as individuals and then popping them up there when I do something like that. I tend to not ask the questions of troubled projects of what made this troubled because again that’s is focusing on the negative. What I try to do in this case here to generate ideas is I might ask questions like What advice would you give to somebody joining the team.

Ron: Run.

Steve: And if the answers run why? Because I don’t want to say no ideas a bad idea but if somebody if somebody is going to give an answer like that everybody’s entitled to an opinion.

Ron: You’ll probably get that one out of humor if nothing else. Yeah I get it.

Steve: There’s some things that I put on there like what are some tools that would be helpful for you?

Ron: Well my goodness. It’s great to talk to you again. Second time we’ve had you on. I’m going to put your contact information in show notes for people who are listening just let people know how they can get a hold of you or see what you’re up to.

Steve: Yeah. So you can take a look at my Web site. It’s set www Cottage Street Consulting dot com. That’s all one word. Cottage Street Consulting dot com or you can e-mail me at Steve at Cottage Street Consulting dot com. And when you go to my Web site you’ll see a couple things up there that might be of interest. Since I do speak quite a lot at different conferences and write quite a lot of white papers. There is a lot of my presentations in white papers that are up there for you to download for free. And then, I also have a list of my upcoming speaking engagements, public workshops, as well as my private workshop list where you can either click on those register right away or you can contact me through my email and we can talk about some private onsite things.

Ron: Thanks so much for joining us today.

Steve: Thanks. It’s been a pleasure.