Inflection Points 4: Beyond Groupthink. How leaders can cover all angles in the age of uncertainty
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Really fascinating how much interest there has been in IKEA’s decision to move towards using foresight tools like scenario planning to help navigate uncertainty and build resilience and agility. Correctly, there’s a growing view that tools designed in an age of stability and relative predictability aren’t fit for purpose at a time of unprecedented uncertainty.
This week’s Substack is about avoiding groupthink. Much of the mindset that created traps and short sightedness in recent decades was created through an unwillingness to think beyond a consensus worldview. At a time of unpredictability and uncertainty, it’s more important than ever to ignore the herd and fully think all problems through.
On Groupthink. “Everyone I know has bought the album.”
When talking about “groupthink”, I’m always reminded of the possibly apocryphal story about the late British DJ, John Peel. For the benefit of non-British readers, Peel was particularly well known for his championing of obscure bands and obscure genres. The story goes that he once said to a friend that he couldn’t understand why a certain band (I think it was the Buzzcocks) wasn’t doing better in the charts because “everyone I know has bought their album.” His friend was quick to respond that “the problem is that you know everybody who has bought the album.”
This is a fine example of cohesive groups becoming echo chambers, at times knowingly oblivious to the world outside of the echo chamber. As Irving Janis put it in “Victims of Groupthink”, this means that:
concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive ingroup that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action.”
Thinking beyond the herd matters more than ever at a time when uncertainty and the upending of assumptions means that business must be readier than ever to “think the unthinkable”. Being able to see beyond groupthink is essential to being resilient in uncertain times.
The folly of letting ideas go unchallenged
There’s a strong argument that many of the assumptions that lay behind the lack of preparation for uncertainty were based on a type of groupthink. To name just a few ideas that went largely unchallenged for many years:
Liberal globalisation would inevitably promote peace and democracy. The Friedmanite Golden Arches Doctrine that no two countries with McDonalds would ever go to war with each other became received wisdom for several years. Sadly we know how wrong this groupthink proved to be. Freedom House reported that democracies have been in decline globally for 15 consecutive years.
Controlling the internet would be like trying to “nail jello to the wall”. China managed to find a largely effective way of “nailing jello to the wall” and other countries seem to be following suit, with the growth of digital authoritarianism.
Financial services deregulation of all kinds was inevitably a good thing. This groupthink ran into the 2008 banking crash.
In each of these cases, the alternative was barely considered, meaning that businesses, governments and other organisations found it difficult to respond when a theory came face to face with reality. The same applied in businesses that went from dominant to failing. Kodak, for example, suffered from groupthink that digital photography was a “luxury” product that wouldn’t disrupt traditional film.
Companies must widen their “palette of possibility” as they confront an uncertain future
Given that the once unthinkable has now become reality (deglobalisation, decoupling between China and the West, land war in Europe, border closures due to Covid), companies need to expand their palettte of possibility if they are going to be able to adapt to increased uncertainty.
Sadly, just as businesses need to expand their horizon, there’s a chance that resistance to alternative viewpoints might be growing. An economic recession, with a growing number of layoffs, mightn’t be the perfect environment for people to disagree with their boss. Without structures to encourage groupthink and diverse opinions, companies might be walking into traps that might otherwise have been avoided.
Social media, FOMO and the acceleration of groupthink
We know that groupthink has long been an issue for businesses and governments (Irving Janis famously used the Bay of Pigs and Pearl Harbour as examples of “foreign policy fiascoes” caused by groupthink), but the frenetic nature of social media arguably makes the propensity event worse. Research from the University of Berkeley showed that people on social media were influenced by group dynamics in a desire not to be left out. Fascinatingly they found that the larger the group on social media the more likely people are to move towards group dynamics, which they describe as “scale-induced category convergence.” The chart below shows how, in an experiment based on nominating a variety of shapes, larger groups were more likely to converge around a small number of shapes.
Hence the frequent surges of group-based thinking on social media as certain issues and amongst certain interest groups. We’ve seen the likes of the ice bucket challenge have gone from “nil” to “craze” in days and “internet pile-ons” resulting from herd mentality. In recent weeks, the internet has helped spark a “spontaneous religious revival” in Wilmore Kentucky and encouraged most “Twitter engaged Fantasy Football players” to swap Liverpool for Brentford players before Liverpool beat Manchester United 7-0. FOMO might very much be a social media phrase, but fear of missing out might well accelerate groupthink in the internet age.
How to broaden your palette of possibilities
The growth of uncertainty makes it more important than ever to build as broad a palate of possibilities as possible. Given this, how can organisations move from the inevitable pressures towards groupthink (hierarchy, day-to-day pressures, the importance of team dynamics and social media)?
Scenarios broaden the mind
As I’ve written in the first few Substacks, we set up Artemon because we believe in the importance of foresight capabilities, such as scenario planning, to help companies navigate uncertainty. One of the many advantages of scenario based thinking is that it enables businesses to view things from a much broader perspective than when focused purely on the day-to-day. Put simply, scenarios and foresight use previously unconsidered angles to consider how the future might develop and provide the structure to look beyond herd thinking. Understanding how the future might be different provides an important way of reframing how we see the present as well.
Encourage the counterintuitive and diversity of opinion
Groupthink is going to prevail if efforts aren’t made to actively counter it. Kennedy’s Vigilant Appraisal process, instituted in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, marks a potential way of avoiding herd thinking. This technique encourages the articulation of alternative opinions and the involvement (and interrogation) of outside experts. External experts are also, of course, able to provide counterintuitive and controversial opinions in way that company insiders (with one eye on promotion and evaluation processes) might feel uncomfortable with.
Building a deliberate critique into a process from as many angles as possible should be an essential part of any strategic process. At Artemon we call this “second opinion strategy”, where we interrogate strategies or emerging strategies by a variety of critical lens. For example, we will use foresight to “future test” strategies, as well as running it through other critical lens, such as “how might competitors respond” and “how might the regulatory environment develop”.
De Bono’s “six thinking hats” also represents a useful angle to move beyond groupthink. In this concept, the nominated “black hat wearer” will be expected to articulate the problems with an idea. Moving the black hat around also ensures that one person doesn’t get a reputation as being “difficult”. Building a structure like this is, of course, no substitute for having diversity within a team, so that diverse viewpoints are encouraged and expected.
Running meetings differently
Hierarchical meetings are clearly those in which groupthink is more likely to arise. JFK understood the danger of hierarchy stifling open discussion, so he didn’t attend initial meetings as part of the Vigilant Appraisal process.
JFK promoted the Vigilant Appraisal method to tackle groupthink.
We’ve also developed a number of techniques to ensure that diverse and dissenting opinions are not ignored. Key amongst these include:
For important workshops or strategic meetings, set key questions beforehand and ask participants to write down thoughts and responses beforehand. Specifically ensure that participants don’t discuss ideas ahead of the meeting and are prepared to go in with an open mind.
Break larger groups into smaller groups when discussing important strategic issues. Do this before the larger group considers the larger strategic question.
Ensure that leadership figures don’t guide the discussion by setting out their views at the start of a meeting. This might well lead to dissenting opinions being less likely to be voiced.
Growing uncertainty means thinking beyond conventional wisdom is more important than ever, which means taking particular attention to moving beyond groupthink. To return to the John Peel quote that we started with, it’s important that all the people sitting around the table aren’t singing the same lyrics.
And Finally…
Other things that have caught our eye this week:
Business Insider on the companies using water coolers to track office use.
Are work phones making a comeback? Partially due to potential Tik Tok bans?
Growing unionisation in tech and what this means.