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Groupthink, Social Influence and Being Different

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These ideas might be a bit jumbled as they are crashing together in my head right now.

I am currently reading Originals by Adam Grant (which I am enjoying much more than I expected based on some peer feedback). One of the chapters in the book addresses the concept of Groupthink which is quite relevant for the times we are currently experiencing.

The CoronaVirus has, in my opinion, created a really challenge within our communities when it comes to Groupthink, Social Influence and those wanting to be different.

Here are my thoughts.

Groupthink


I feel as though a lot of businesses are being dominated by Groupthink at this time. From my experience, when times are stressful and uncertain, people are quite happy to let someone else make the decisions, no one really wants to be the person who takes responsibility for owning the solution.

There is a focus on harmony and conformity, that no one wants to rock the boat or challenge the person making the decisions.

The reason why I say that I believe most businesses are falling victim to this right now is because of the types of "solutions" or approaches that we are seeing implemented in order to try and mitigate or manage this outbreak. Everyone seems to be doing the same things, they are all taking similar approaches and no retailers are really doing anything that is drastically standing out from the crowd or interacting with their customers in a different way.

Given the size of these organizations, there really should be more differentiation in their solutions or approaches to the problem. In order to play it safe, and not rock the boat, senior leaders in these organizations are promoting similar solutions that they are seeing or have been already put in place, and they are just rolling these out throughout their organizations.

Examples:
  • Mass hiring to do more home delivery
    • Why is no one really pushing click and collect more than home delivery? It's far more efficient given limited resources
  • 8AM to 9AM shopping hours for more at risk populations
    • Why only these times? Why such a short window? Why has no business really decided to do anything differently for these people?
  • Plexiglass cashier shields
    • Going up at all retailers in similar ways
Those are a few off the top of my head.

The reality is most organizations like to believe they are open and encourage healthy conflict internally, in my experience however, most don't actually walk the walk.

The challenge with this in difficult times is that you have leaders that end up surrounding themselves with "yes people" who basically will just support the vision or approach of the leader. This all but eliminates the possibility of novel solutions as well as leaving a lot of risk to overlooking errors or gaps in the approach. Dissenting opinions are not only about someone else giving a better solution, the act itself of discussing different options (even if completely wrong or worse) forces much more divergent thinking within the group.

Social Influence

This one is on us, the general population. I think EVERYONE can see the impact of social influence throughout this pandemic (how many rolls of toilet paper do you have in your house right now?)

Social proof is considered prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that the surrounding people possess more knowledge about the current situation.

With so much information out there, and with it coming from so many different areas, a lot of people don't know what to believe. In almost any conversation we have these days, it seems someone else has a soundbite or tidbit that you hadn't heard or read that makes you think "really?".

Since we are getting bombard with so much information that is out of context, we find ourselves falling back to basic coping mechanism of conformity ... there's safety in numbers right?

If others are doing it, it must be good because they must know something I don't know.

Humans are extremely social animals. We can tout our sophistication all we like, however when we are scared or unsure, feeling like we are part of the tribe / community is extremely comforting. Even though we have our own preferences, and normally feel safe enough to exercise them, when we are scared or anxious we have a tendency to follow the decisions of those before us.

In just the same way Groupthink can present similar options with little variation, social influences also make it so people accept these same solutions and don't express the issues they see with it when it seems like their whole community is accepting or praising those solutions.


Being Different


This is actually hard.

It is hard to constantly take on this kind of role, to be someone that always wants to push the boundaries and look at problems from multiple angles.

I am one of those people and I know from experience how the pressure to conform or just go with an idea can weigh on you.

It was once said to me "You always give good feedback, but often in our meetings it feels like everyone in the room has to convince you, you don't want to just go with the team". Don't get me wrong, sometimes I probably push or want to explore and idea too long, but I never saw the value of not making sure everything was on the table.

That comment was difficult to take, because it highlights right away a sense of being an outside within your tribe. That comment was made to me by my boss, who honestly was the best boss I ever had and he is an extremely great mentor, so this issue is not being a bad leader; I believe however that we typically don't promote healthy conflict and the act of having dissenting discussion enough in our organizations.

If you want to check out something interesting with respect to always expressing divergent opinions, check out Ray Dalio's book Principles.



Hopefully we will start to see some different and mixed ways from our community to handle the challenge of COVID19 ... I am not sure how quickly we can prevail if we aren't pushing ourselves to be more creative and unique.


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