Today’s Teamwork Explorer Tip is the Queen of Clubs (decision making) – Wisdom of Crowds. (Need to know more about our approach to teamwork?) See our Teamwork Explorer blog post.)
Queen of Clubs – Wisdom of Crowds
One of the reasons we work in teams is to have input on an issue from various different perspectives. In Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki, suggests that optimum solutions are found when all these diverse opinions are incorporated into the decision.
How do you ensure that you hear all voices on the team, even the unpopular ones? Obviously this is very much dependent on the nature of the team, and there’s no one right answer. However, my work with teams suggests that some of the best ways to elicit diverse opinions would include setting clear ground rules that encourage the non-judgmental sharing of ideas. You also have to ask the right questions. Sometimes team members can have valuable input, but fail to share it because they don’t think it’s been asked for, or that it will add value. “Does anyone have anything else to share (no matter how crazy it may sound) regarding this issue?” or something similar is a great question to ask before moving to decision making.
Of course, the next big challenge, once all the diverse opinions are shared, is to incorporate them into a decision. The Jelly Beans in the Jar example is very straightforward. Fill a glass jar with jelly beans and ask people to guess how many there are. Then calculate the mean of the answers. I’ve tested this with several groups and the mean is almost always the best answer in the room.
It gets more complex of course when the problem at hand is something more realistic that the team really needs to move forward on. An approach I find useful when opinions are so diverse (perhaps even contradictory) that they can’t be incorporated into a single solution, is scrap the idea that there is one best solution. Once teams start looking for multiple, good, potential solutions, rather than the one best solution, they can move forward with testing prototypes rather getting stuck in what is often called “analysis paralysis”.
Finally a word of caution. Not all decisions lend themselves to a Wisdom of Crowds approach. The decision about which decision making approach is the most appropriate, is of course, the most important decision!
Curious about the rest of the tips and want to know all about them now? Find out more!
Posted by Dave
