Reducing Groupthink and Improving Decision Making in Risk Workshops

 

Many people have been in a circumstance featuring groupthink, in which group members try to

obtain a common opinion for the sake of harmony. Members frequently disregard their personal

beliefs in order to concur with the majority viewpoint. Even when members disagree with the

group's judgments, they tend to remain silent, preferring to keep the peace rather than shatter the

crowd's homogeneity for fear of isolation. Groupthink is a psychological condition that makes it

difficult to make rational decisions. Improving engagement can be done by properly structuring a

risk workshop and introducing anonymous voting. As a result of reducing groupthink, risk

evaluations will be more accurate.

 

Even in the best of circumstances, risk workshops may be challenging. Even if you succeed in

herding team members, managers, and executives into rooms, getting the engagement needed for

members to critically analyze the assumptions that underpin risk and strategy outcomes is

difficult. When it comes to judging measures of Likelihood (L) and Consequence (C), the

choices are frequently influenced by groupthink, a psychological phenomenon. This article

explains what groupthink is and how the Blue Mountains City Council's Governance & Risk

Team (GRT) adopted some easy tactics to combat it during risk workshops.

 

When correctly planned, risk workshops can and do work. Groupthink must be minimized in

order to acquire the best risk estimates from members. Allowing members to vote anonymously

on their choices is an effective way to achieve this goal. Individuals of two concurrent

workshops had extremely varied perceptions of danger, as revealed in this article, which would

not be present if members were not in the same workshop.

 

 

 

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