In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Nemeth

Author:Charlan Nemeth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2018-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

PART III

GROUPTHINK VERSUS GROUPS OF THINKERS

UP TO NOW, WE HAVE SEEN THAT THE SIMPLE FACT OF AN OPINION BEING either in the majority or in the minority has very different effects on people. When it is a majority, we take their perspective. We narrow the information we seek and how we approach a problem. Dissent, on the other hand, is one of the most powerful forms of influence for the liberation of thought. When faced with a minority opinion, we search for information and look at problems from multiple points of view—not just the minority’s point of view, and not just our own. On balance, we make better judgments and are better able to detect new solutions. We even think in more original ways.

In Part III, we will explore these processes of consensus and dissent and their impact on decision-making in ongoing groups and organizations. It is one thing to manipulate consensus or dissent in experiments, as we did in Chapters 4 and 5, to see their effect on specific thought patterns. It is another thing to see these phenomena operate in real groups.

In Chapter 6, we will see why consensus, especially if it occurs early, is a problem for the quality of the discussion and for the quality of the decision. This is not just a problem when most everyone is in agreement at the outset. Groups move to consensus on their own via reliable and well-researched phenomena. Some of this movement is motivated, but much of it lies in the nature of the discourse. What is said and by whom is neither random nor equal; there are reliable patterns. Most of these processes move the group to consensus around the initial majority position; some make the judgment and decision more extreme than might have been predicted from the original individual positions.

In Chapter 7, we will address two presumed “antidotes” for this rush to consensus and, with it, poor decision-making processes: diversity and techniques such as devil’s advocate. Supporters believe that these “antidotes” thwart pressure to consensus and lead to more divergent thinking. The problem is that, like most quick fixes, they don’t work—at least not in the simple fashion in which they are promoted.

Diversity has “two heads” and can be an impediment as well as a benefit. One problem is that most people think of diversity in terms of categories—for example, gender or race—whereas, in fact, it is diversity of opinion that better predicts improved performance. And more than just a diversity of opinion, it is combat between different positions that provides the benefits for decision making. Devil’s advocate is one of many techniques that try to create “pretend dissent”: to plant an opposing view on the assumption that it will cause people to consider alternatives, to ponder the cons as well as the pros of their position. But as research has shown, it doesn’t. We will see that such techniques do not clone the positive effects of authentic dissent. The stimulation for divergent thinking comes from the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.