Once Again, with Feeling: the Mob Doesn’t Think

Common sense dictates that “groupthinking” is the best way to run
the world, but one unflinching look at festering “democracies,” ugly
committee-bred videogames, or corporate team-based work unravels the
contrary. As David Freedman puts it so simply, “Collaboration is the
hottest buzzword in business today. Too bad it doesn’t work.”

This write-up on INC is so fascinating that I easily surrender to
the seduction of stealing large swaths of text and indulging in
blatant copy-and-paste behavior.

“Is there anyone more loathed in office culture than the
autocratic decision maker who ignores the opinion of the group? It’s
Business 101: Get lots of input, put your heads together, reach a
consensus. The primacy of groups and teamwork is so ingrained that we
seldom stop to think about it anymore. Now in the age of instant
messaging, wikis, social networking sites, and videoconferencing on
cell phones, collaboration and consensus are gaining yet more currency.
We can, and often do, get everyone to weigh in, all the time, whether
it’s by cell phone, e-mail, or instant message. As James Surowiecki
nicely puts it in the title of his best-selling book, it’s “the wisdom
of crowds,” and it’s a glorious thing.”

“So what about the wisdom of crowds? Did Surowiecki really get it
wrong? Not necessarily. He simply focused on the sorts of situations in
which large groups of people can in fact work pretty well. A group of
investors will usually outperform a single expert; the bad opinions in
the crowd tend to cancel out, so that the average is “wise.” Google can
tap a sea of websites to provide useful answers, and crowds have done a
great job creating Linux, because in these cases useful contributions
from the crowd can be leveraged while noncontributors stay harmlessly
out of the way. And to his credit, Surowiecki does note that crowds
often are not very wise at all.”

“What he glosses over, however, is the often spectacular way groups
fail in the context of organizations. Consider that paragon of group
magic, the brainstorming session. Bernard Nijstad, a psychologist at
the University of Amsterdam, explains that if you take a group of 12
people and have half brainstorm together on a topic while the other six
go it alone, all 12 will usually agree that the group experience was
more productive–even though those working alone almost always end up
with more good ideas. Nijstad believes it’s because people in groups
spend most of their time listening to others rather than thinking on
their own, while lone brainstormers are forced to stew in productive
but unpleasant silence. “When you’re alone, it’s painfully clear when
you’re not producing. In a group you can just sit there and not notice
you’re not contributing,” Nijstad says. No wonder we love to work in
groups.”

It reminds me of the usual question I’d get when job interviews were
still a part of my life: “How well do you work with a team?” I’d
usually answer it by wowing the interviewer with fascinating tales of
my flawless, team-loving character. Although everybody who knows me
would probably squirm in their seat as they hear me lie through my
teeth; they know very well how fiercely and hopelessly I’m a lone wolf,
that I despise opinion when it’s coming from groups, that I value above
all else the wild beauty of “productive but unpleasant silence.”

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