GROUP THINK

Fenny suggested GROUP THINK.

The two-word phrase is much better than groupthink, a term used to describe dysfunctional decision-making when group members place conformity and avoidance of conflict over critical evaluation.  Groupthink may occur to provide “psychological safety” but it inhibits conflict resolution in which the root causes of the “conflicting” issues are determined and once determined may be harmonized instead of combined in conflicting ways. With conflict resolution the “volume vs. rigor debate” becomes a focus on how to be rigorous efficiently.

We don’t want groupthink but we need GROUP THINK. We have so much to do, so much to IMPROVE, so much to INNOVATE, that we need GROUP THINKing. We need the comprehensive thinking that no one can do alone – critical evaluation and consideration of many perspectives where one person cannot think about all the perspectives at once. GROUP THINK in this way allows parallel and distributed efforts at problem-solving which can get us further and faster, as long as we prioritize the most important problems to solve.

I haven’t chosen the words so far this week and am learning some terms I didn’t know before. I will take an AMBIVERTED approach to thinking, sometimes thinking alone to improve my thoughts before sharing with the group and sometimes sharing them interactively to get the benefit of GROUP THINK. If I replace asking “What do you think?” with “What does the GROUP THINK?” I won’t be asking for simple voting or preferences – I will be asking for multiperspective critical evaluation.

And we have a great group of good thinkers, so applying GROUP THINK well will achieve EXCEPTIONAL hresults.