Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 10, 2015

Many of us are familiar with the hazards of Groupthink - when teams or organizations operate on autopilot and feel a general false sense of invulnerability. One strategy that can significantly help teams avoid the dangers of Groupthink and successfully respond to emerging threats and opportunities is to create structured debates.

Groupthink 8

Groupthink Team Consensus Christensen 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 28, 2015

Today, a few organizations – like Medium, David Allen Consultants, and Zappos – are adopting a radically different, approach to management: holacracy. For all of the sturm und drang surrounding the idea, as we talked I realized a lot of holacracy is just codifying many of the informal elements of good management.

Groupthink 8

Groupthink Agility Diversity Information 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 7, 2016

Managers make about three billion decisions each year, and almost all of them can be made better. The stakes for doing so are real: decisions are the most powerful tool managers have for getting things done. For comparison, goal-setting best practices helped managers achieve expected results only 30% of the time.)

Kahneman 8

Kahneman Groupthink Tools Software 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 25, 2011

Will they integrate with current Business Intelligence systems? But overreliance on these firms leads to industry groupthink, and complexity-theory research tells us that it's impossible to predict the behavior of a large system (such as the world of tech innovation) beyond the next few moves.

CIO 14

CIO Venture Capitalist Chief Information Officer Conference 14

RapidStart Leadership

MAY 23, 2017

Leading effectively isn’t just building a system and then letting it run. Manage time differently. But after a while, even the best ones can descend into groupthink and lose their creative edge. It’s important to have clear systems and procedures for getting things done. Everything seems fresh and full of opportunity.

Groupthink 130

Groupthink Open-book Creativity Team 130

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 15, 2017

They have a healthy mistrust of computer systems and they understand that no software is immune to bugs (and that even without bugs, software will still have security vulnerabilities). This helps teams avoid tunnel vision and groupthink, and gets them thinking more creatively. Sponsored by Varonis.

Training 8

Training Software Groupthink Learning-by-Doing 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 17, 2015

How did the stars at that firm manage to shine brightly together, while those at the other merely twinkled on their own? Teams low in diversity often succumb to groupthink; they agree with each other too quickly and fail to consider novel courses of action. While both had top people, one was dramatically more successful in the market.

Team 8

Team How To Efficiency Groupthink 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Suzlon recently completed its acquisition of Germany-based REpower Systems, gaining access to cutting-edge expertise in aerodynamics and electronics. Polycentric innovation won't work in organizations that promote groupthink. Reliance MediaWorks.

Globalization 9

Globalization Innovation Decentralization Chemicals 9

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Researchers find echoes of this story in other contexts all the time — circumstances where adding safety-enhancements to systems actually makes crisis situations more dangerous, not less so. Imagine further that, if you choose incorrectly, you will push the system into an unrecoverable catastrophe.

Banking 8

Banking Crisis Hedge System 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

However, when other team members pointed out the double standard in expectations, I realized that I had let the situation go on for too long, inadvertently placing our managers in a no-win situation. While there are no right or wrong types, having too many people with similar personalities tends to lead to problems and groupthink.

Company 8

Company Committee Long-term Groupthink 8

ExactHire - Leadership

MARCH 8, 2017

Sometimes, senior management doesn’t think core values are a big deal because they think every employee already knows how they are supposed to act to succeed. While the company has been in business since 2007, our management team had some of the same objections that I initially mentioned. Performance management process?

Process 52

Process Groupthink Company Document 52

Harvard Business Review

MAY 4, 2015

No wonder so many managers choose to avoid advertizing openings. Fortunately, time-strapped managers can use freely available tools to publicize your call, gather applications, and collaborate with your team for evaluating the candidates. In 2009, I was hiring aides for a senior IT management job. Here’s an example.

Tools 8

Tools Groupthink Advertising Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 27, 2015

And, along with management experts, they have provided helpful tips that decision-makers can use to try to correct for those biases. A first pass at the problem resulted in a proposal to install a unit called a flexi-coker — a major system capable of refining a range of crude oil types and minimizing the ultra-heavy coke residual.

Organization 8

Organization Uncertainty Proposal Quality 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 4, 2014

Complex problems are characterized by confusing systems of causal interactions; untangling these requires multiple different points of view. Path dependence is the tendency for things (such as events, belief systems, personalities, evolution, and conversations) to unfold in ways that are constrained by the parameters of the path they are on.

Productivity 16

Productivity Products Brainstorming Diversity 16

Harvard Business Review

JULY 4, 2014

Complex problems are characterized by confusing systems of causal interactions; untangling these requires multiple different points of view. Path dependence is the tendency for things (such as events, belief systems, personalities, evolution, and conversations) to unfold in ways that are constrained by the parameters of the path they are on.

Productivity 11

Productivity Products Brainstorming Diversity 11