Question

Think of some of the advantages and disadvantages of participative group decision making.

• What is the most common problem with Group Think within an organization?
• What is your experience with Group Think?
• How was it resolved and what lessons were learned?
• What could have been done upfront to avoid the issue?

Answer 1

Solution:

Group thinking is considered as an important exercise in any organization since it is the best way to brainstorm ideas and come up with better ideas and initiatives for the topic at hand. Some of the advantages of group decision making will be the ability to consider the views of all those who are involved which can serve as a great input at the start and on which we can narrow down to reach the final possible set of decisions. Group decision making reduces the onus on a particular being and hence more authentic and unbiased decisions are made using this particular process.
The disadvantages of group thinking are the speed of decision making. group thinking and decision making is a very slow process and often it takes much more time to come at a final decision. Sometimes due to internal conflicts within the group and the inability to come to a final decision of the members becomes troublesome for the entire process and the group decision-making process becomes a failure. The common problem with groupthink is the number of people involved in making the decision leading to diverse opinions and slow speed of making the decisions. My personal experience with groupthink has most of the time resulted in a way where the group was not able to narrow down on the final decision and we had to postpone the group meetings. This problem can be resolved by making a heterogeneous group with a small number and a clear objective of the decision making which needs to be clear to every one of the group. The lessons learned were that in group decision making having a clear objective and having a clarity of that objectives is very important and hence it should be clear at the start of the process. Hence, making sure of these key points can result in a very efficient decision making within a group.