Useful–again, useful–research on when and how group decision making works:
When it operates efficiently, a group’s decision making will nearly always outperform the ability of any one of its members working on their own. This is especially the case if the group is formed of diverse members. One problem: groups rarely work efficiently.
A new meta-analysis of 72 studies, involving 4,795 groups and over 17,000 individuals has shown that groups tend to spend most of their time discussing the information shared by members, which is therefore redundant, rather than discussing information known only to one or a minority of members. This is important because those groups that do share unique information tend to make better decisions.
Another important factor is how much group members talk to each other. Ironically, Jessica Mesmer-Magnus and Leslie DeChurch found that groups that talked more tended to share less unique information.
So much of research lacks a clear path to practice; it is refreshing to see a study with such clear results that it will be hard to ignore.
I think the key from that piece is that when groups work they were attempting “to solve a problem where a correct answer exists, rather than seeking a consensus opinion or judgment”.
I think this comes back to a theme I’ve seen in a lot of the group/collaboration lit, is that having consensus is not important, but having a leader to illicit opinions, but not necessarily incorporate all of them, is where we will have successful outcomes.
Forced consensus or groupthink is probably the worst outcome, unless they get lucky and get it right.
Agreed. Seems obvious, but groups continually repeat the consensus opinion pattern. I suspect pressure to exercise convergent thinking causes premature convergence on an opinion rather than a fact.
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