Groupthink

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Groupthink

Steve Shore, MBA, PMP, CSSGB

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Introduction to Groupthink

Groupthink: Background

• Term from Yale social

psychologist Irving Janis in

1972.

• Researched why a team

reaches an excellent decision

one time, and a disastrous

one the next.

• Groupthink model designed

to help teams prevent bad

decisions.

Groupthink: Background con’d

• Participants have need

for consensus.

• Alternatives not fully

analyzed.

• Decision makers have

desire to be an accepted

member of a group.

Groupthink: 8 Symptoms

• A Highly Cohesive Group

1. An illusion of invulnerability creates

excessive optimism and encourages extreme

risk taking.

2. Unquestioned belief in the group‟s inherent

morality. Members ignore the ethical or moral

consequences of their decisions.

Groupthink: 8 Symptoms con’t

• Closed-mindedness

3. People rationalize in order to discount

warnings or other information that might

lead the members to reconsider their

assumptions.

4. Stereotyped views of others.

Groupthink: 8 Symptoms con’t

• Pressures Toward Uniformity

5. Shared illusion of unity.

6. Minimize the importance of counter-

arguments.

7. Direct pressure on any member who

expresses arguments against the group.

8. Members who protect the group from

adverse information.

Part 2: NASA’s History

NASA’s Origins: The Space Race Begins

October 4, 1957: The Soviet

Union launches Sputnik.

October 1, 1958:

Congress creates

NASA.

Project Mercury 1961-1963

• 1958: Project Mercury

initiated.

• Mercury 7 astronauts

signed-up.

• Alan Shepard: In space

on May 5, 1961 for 15

min, 28 seconds.

President Kennedy Sets the Stage

May 25, 1961: President Kennedy

initiated the Apollo program in a

speech to Congress.

September 12, 1962: Speech to

Rice University.

Project Gemini 1962-1966

Apollo 1 Setback

• January 27, 1967:

Apollo 1 fire during launch

simulation killed "Gus"

Grissom, Ed White, and

Roger Chaffee.

• A review board formed.

• The board noted several

organizational-related

factors that contributed to

the accident.

Apollo Program 1963-1972

December 21, 1968: Apollo 8 circles the moon. Astronauts

read from the Book of Genesis on December 24th.

History Made: Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969

Apollo 13

Successes in the 1970s

The Shuttle Program Begins

The 1980s

The Challenger Disaster: January 28, 1986

Mission STS-51L

The Hubble Telescope Story

The 1990s and the ISS

The Columbia Disaster: February 1, 2003

Mission STS-107

Part 3: Lessons Learned

Evaluation of NASA’s Culture

• Culture of invulnerability, built upon

technological successes.

• Leadership traditionally based on

technical people that were degreed

in hard sciences, which created a

culture based on common

attributes.

• Promoted “better, faster, cheaper” not “quality, risk, and safety”.

• Management had a pattern of ignoring or suppressing

constructive conflict.

• Management lost their ability to accept criticism, which led them

to reject recommendations.

Evaluation of NASA’s Culture

• Engineers felt they had to prove that

situations were unsafe, rather than

proving things were safe.

• No consensus on the definition

of risk.

• It is believed that the various project

managers felt more accountable to their managers than to the

overall shuttle program.

• NASA managers evaded safety regulations in order to maintain

the aggressive launch schedule.

Evaluation of Challenger Disaster

• Launch postponed 3 times. NASA fearful American public would

regard agency as inept if delayed further.

• Challenger launched at lowest temperature in shuttle program.

• Morton Thiokol engineers argued they did not have enough data

to determine if O-rings would properly work below 53°F.

• Post-disaster analysis revealed probability of disaster > 99%.

• Both NASA managers and engineers knew about O-ring design

flaw since 1977, but never addressed the issue.

• Poor communications were vague and open to interpretations.

• The company stated that „„lower temperatures are in the

direction of badness for O-rings...”

• Engineers at Rockwell International expressed concerns about

ice buildup, but managers restated the concerns in a passive

way, leading mission control to disregard the concerns.

Evaluation of Columbia Disaster

• Disaster tied to management not understanding the tradeoffs

between the conflicting goals of cost, schedule, and safety.

• Engineers knew the shuttle was being hit by foam on nearly every

flight, but decided condition was of no immediate consequence, and

might be a maintenance problem to be addressed at a later time.

• Unfortunately, many of the checks-and-balances put in place after

Challenger had been removed in the name of faster and cheaper.

• On the mission‟s 2nd day, engineers suspected there was damage to

the orbiter. NASA managers decided to limit the investigation on the

grounds that little could be done even if problems were found.

Groupthink Symptoms Applied to Events

• Having a Highly Cohesive Group: The illusion of invulnerability

creates excessive optimism and encourages extreme risk taking.

• When engineers raised the possibility of catastrophic O-ring

issues, a NASA manager nonchalantly pointed out that this risk

was „„true of every other flight we have had."

• The O-ring seal is a critical failure point without backup. A

NASA manager testified „„we were counting on the backup O-

ring to be the sealing O-ring under the worst case conditions.”

• “Knowing what I know now about gas entering the shuttle’s

wing, do I believe the mission I was on was any more risky than

I thought it was when I took off? No.” Astronaut Mary Ellen

Weber, following May 2000 mission.

Groupthink Symptoms Applied to Events

• Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.

• There is a shared illusion of unanimity because silence means

there is consent.

• Pressuring People Towards Uniformity:

• In the Columbia disaster, the same engineers that identified the

problem did not speak-up and express their concerns for fear of

being ridiculed and losing their jobs.

• Pressure people who expresses counter-arguments.

• Morton Thiokol‟s Senior Vice President urged the Vice President

of Engineering to ‘‘take off your engineering hat and put on your

management hat."

• Protect the group from adverse information and “troublesome” ideas.

• Morton Thiokol‟s expert on O-rings stated to the Rogers

Commission that he ‘‘was not even asked to participate in

giving input to the final decision.”

Preventing Groupthink

• Assign each member the role of “critical evaluator” with permission – and

encouragement – to freely air objections and doubts.

• Managers shouldn‟t express opinions when assigning tasks.

• Set up several independent groups to work on the same problem.

• All effective alternatives should be openly examined.

• Members should discuss ideas with trusted people outside of the group.

• 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.

Summary

• Mindset is to not rock the boat. Group members avoid

promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus

thinking.

• Ideas are not critically analyzed because members want to

minimize conflict.

• Individual doubts are set aside as few alternatives considered.

• Minimal or no re-examination of alternatives that may have

been initially discarded.

• Expert opinions and “negative” information is rejected.

• In the end, groups make hasty, irrational decisions.

References

• Carveth, Rodney and Claire Ferraris. NASA and the Columbia Disaster:

Decision-making by groupthink? 2003, Association for Business

Communication Annual Convention.

• Bond, Timothy; Robert Dimitroff; Lu Ann Schmidt. Organizational Behavior

and Disaster: A Study of Conflict at NASA. June 2005. Project Management

Journal.

• Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB).

• Bazerman, Max and Dolly Chugh. Decisions without blinders. Harvard

Business Review. January 2006.