House of Eratosthenes

I finally tracked down that disgusting and reprehensible leadership training exercise I attended ten years ago, which more-or-less marks the pivotal point in time where I realized something about the world was going horribly, horribly wrong. It’s called “Wilderness Survival” and you can find it here.

This petulant hostility to the way individuals think — I do not know where it comes from. It seems to be coupled with an ignorance of history, since it can be fairly said we don’t have anything in our lives that make life more bearable, that wasn’t created or inspired in some way by an individual. To the things that came from groups, we owe very little. Why this perpetual allegiance to “brainstorming” sessions where they’re not necessary? I have some ideas. First, people thinking in groups do make things happen; more often than not, a group of people will control purse strings. And so, groups appropriate money for things. This creates an illusion that groups make things happen. But for coming up with the idea in the first place, and validating it as a truly worthy idea capable of solving an identified problem — these are the domains of the individual. Groups can’t do this. One of those things everybody understands to be true, you’re just not always allowed to say so out loud.

Also, the group setting is good for identifying attributes to a platform that are offensive to one important faction, albeit innocuous and harmless to a different faction. The group deliberation process, therefore, is roughly akin to sandpaper. It removes protrusions that would be otherwise offensive. And an individual, no matter how bright he or she is, can’t do that. But — you don’t build with sandpaper. You don’t even shape things with sandpaper, not really.

The exercise has to do with crash-landing in in the wilderness in an extremely remote location in the Arctic. Subsequently, you have to make decisions about things in order to survive. The point of the exercise…at least, this was the point a decade ago, when I went through management training…was that people make better decisions in well-managed groups, than they do by themselves.

There are many flaws involved in this argument.

Flaw #1. Who leads the group. You’re going to make a different choice about your leader, under the flourescent lights of a comfortable conference or training room, than you would in the Arctic Circle. An innocent demonstration of what a fun party-animal you are, maybe a witty joke or two, an anecdote about that time you got rip-roaring drunk and pulled over by a cop…these are going to do wonderful things for your candidacy as the group’s leader when you’re in a comfortable office environment. They show you have this thing called “personality.” It won’t mean jack-shit out on the tundra.

Flaw #2. Individuals and groups are both capable of making bad decisions, and groups are decidedly inferior when it comes to self-policing. An individual makes a bad decision, and he or she may put it to some kind of test. If so, the bad decision will be shown for what it is, and the individual will say “well, that sucks donkey balls” and try something different. After all, if there is a price to be paid for implementing something bad, the innovator will bear that burden personally. Now, groups do this too. And when it comes to making sure the test is applied, rather than overlooked, groups are actually superior. The problem comes up when there is a “consensus” that the idea is so good, that any skeptical tests that might be applied to it, must be “bad.” And when that happens, the group inherits all the weaknesses of an individual and adds another weakness. The new weakness is that awareness of a test that remains un-applied, no longer translates to assurance that it will be applied. In a group, if a test is worth leaving un-applied, it’s worth forgetting about entirely. On the other hand, if an individual knows a test is worth applying and has not yet been applied, the individual will either apply it or remain instinctively aware that something has not yet been tested, and therefore should not be used.

Flaw #3. Groups are incapable of having “excellent” ideas, since they tend toward moderation in what they do. Therefore, if you define “excellence” as something mutually exclusive from being “ordinary,” rather than being a subset of what’s ordinary…and I do define it that way…this is entirely outside the domain of a group process. Extraordinary things — all extraordinary things — are going to be left undone. Think of the Wankel rotary engine, just as an example. Once you get a piston-driven internal-combustion engine working, as far as any group environment will be concerned this is what an engine is. If the Wankel is to be invented, it will be done on a piece of paper taped to the drafting board…of an individual. And like any idiosyncratic idea, this design will survive until it reaches the group, at which time its life-expectancy will be placed in significant doubt. Groups of people simply don’t innovate well. Where there is evidence available to demonstrate that they do, it’s usually because a group stole something from an individual and claimed credit for it.

Flaw #4. Although they are often given credit for drawing on the common experiences of the individuals who comprise them, in my experience it’s more accurate to say groups draw from the common experineces of sub-groups of two or three or more. Which, generally, is a good thing (see Flaw #5). The fact remains, the “drawing from individuals” paradigm is overly simplistic. Groups, more often than not, need a critical mass. The group environment will require a co-sponsor, someone to say “yeah, I think that might be a good idea.” Until then, the idea suggested by a solitary individual, tends to be non-existent in the mind of the group unless that individual happens to be the “ringleader” or an immediate lieutenant.

Flaw #5. Having a group come up with meaningful decisions, is a little bit like a car drawing gasoline out of the bottom of the tank. Crap after crap after crap, just keeps flowin’ on down the line, as participants struggle to prove the criticality of their continuing participation. They want to be invited to the next meeting. And so a beefy filtration system is needed, and invariably, it is forthcoming. But to filter ideas effectively, you need to do a lot of thinking. A group of people filters ideas, and what they do isn’t really “thinking.” Approvals and rebukes are muttered most quickly, with the greatest volume and enthusiasm, when they’re most obvious — but the filtration system is most important to the session overall, when the decision is not so obvious. The eventual result? An individul builds a statue of a horse by carving one part at a time, and fitting them together; the group starts with a block of marble and chisels away whatever doesn’t look like a horse. Each of these methods has its place in certain things. But when you’re stuck in the wilds and freezing to death, with dwindling resources, you’re going to want to build the horse one leg at a time.

Flaw #6. Groups crave approval. That is what they are supposed to do. They anticipate what an identified audience is going to like or dislike, and they jump ahead of the parade to “lead” it. If you want to construct an exercise where the group consistently produces inferior results compared to the individual, all you have to do is find a scenario where the approval of an outside party is either meaningless, or decidedly subordinate to something more important. Rescuing a drowning swimmer, or birthing a baby; maybe deciding at what moment the cord of a parachute is to be pulled. In situations like those, nobody wants a group to decide a damn thing. Everyone who gives it a few seconds of quality thought understands this to be the case.

[…] Earlier this year, I had tracked down a management training exercise I had personally attended ten years previous. I found the management training exercise to be a problematic illustration of human nature at best, and an outright lie at worst. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2007 @ 18:40
[…] Even though nobody reads this blog, the nobodies who do, are well-acquainted with my attitude about droopy trousers. In a way, I’m grateful that they’re here because they help to clarify what goes on when people think in groups. The question that would remain unsettled, if not for them, goes something like this: When you make a decision as part of a large group, are you simply less likely to reach a rational conclusion? Or could it be that you are predisposed to arrive at conclusions that are irrational? […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/15/2007 @ 09:09

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On Groups IIFriday, January 5th, 2007

On Groups II
Friday, January 5th, 2007