SCSCAI leadership, Cause & Effect

SCSCAI Board of Directors;

Ladies & Gentlemen,

When making preparation for the upcoming Golf Ad Hoc Marketing Committee Meeting I encountered problems understanding how committees are supposed to function in Sun City and needed clarification; I requested this information from several homeowners interested in the success of the Golf Ad Hoc Marketing Committee by my memo Need Clarification dated 4/21/10, received zero results. This led me to review the works of Irving Janis “Preventing groupthink” for an explanation how committees function (below). Please review my memo Need Clarification and give me your individual comments.

I believe you all know how concerned I am about the financial situation in Sun City Summerlin, as a homeowner, and I want to contribute to the solution. Do not hesitate to call on me.

Thank you for your consideration,

Dwain A. Kramzar   Retired HomeOwner

2624 High Range Dr.

Las Vegas, NV 89134

Groupthink

Thursday, April 22, 2010

10:22 AM

Symptoms of groupthink

To make groupthink testable, Irving Janis devised eight symptoms indicative of groupthink (1977).

Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.

1.     Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.

2.     Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.

3.     Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.

4.     Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty".

5.     Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.

6.     Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.

7.     Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

Groupthink, resulting from the symptoms listed above, results in defective decision making. That is, consensus-driven decisions are the result of the following practices of groupthinking[5]

·        Incomplete survey of alternatives

·        Incomplete survey of objectives

·        Failure to examine risks of preferred choice

·        Failure to reevaluate previously rejected alternatives

·        Poor information search

·        Selection bias in collecting information

·        Failure to work out contingency plans.

Janis argued that groupthink was responsible for the Bay of Pigs 'fiasco' and other major examples of faulty decision-making. The UK bank Northern Rock, before its nationalisation, is thought to be a recent major example of groupthink.[5] In such real-world examples, a number of the above groupthink symptoms were displayed.

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink>

Preventing groupthink

According to Irving Janis, decision making groups are not necessarily destined to groupthink. He devised seven ways of preventing groupthink (209-15):

·        Leaders should assign each member the role of “critical evaluator”. This allows each member to freely air objections and doubts.

·        Higher-ups should not express an opinion when assigning a task to a group.

·        The organization should set up several independent groups, working on the same problem.

·        All effective alternatives should be examined.

·        Each member should discuss the group's ideas with trusted people outside of the group.

·        The group should invite outside experts into meetings. Group members should be allowed to discuss with and question the outside experts.

·        At least one group member should be assigned the role of Devil's advocate. This should be a different person for each meeting.

By following these guidelines, groupthink can be avoided. After the Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco, John F. Kennedy sought to avoid groupthink during the Cuban Missile Crisis.[6] During meetings, he invited outside experts to share their viewpoints, and allowed group members to question them carefully. He also encouraged group members to discuss possible solutions with trusted members within their separate departments, and he even divided the group up into various sub-groups, to partially break the group cohesion. JFK was deliberately absent from the meetings, so as to avoid pressing his own opinion. Ultimately, the Cuban missile crisis was resolved peacefully, thanks in part to these measures.

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink>

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