| Remedies The various
symptoms can be understood as a mutual effort among group members to maintain self-esteem
and emotional equanimity by providing social support to each other, especially at
times when they share responsibility for making vital decisions. The immediate
consequences, as can be expected, are products of poor decision-making practices because
of inadequate solutions to the problems being dealt with. Fortunately, researchers
in this area have been able to come up with remedies through comparison of practices of
successful groups and those of groupthink-style ones. Some of the recommendations
are listed below.
Formula 1: Assign the role of critical evaluator to each member;
encourage the group to give high priority to open airing of objections and doubts.
Formula 2: Key members of a hierarchy should adopt an impartial stance
instead of stating preferences and expectations at the beginning of assigning a
policy-planning mission to any group/individual.
Formula 3: Routinely setup several outside policy-planning and evaluation
groups within the organization to work on the same policy question, each deliberating
under a different leader to prevent insulation of an ingroup.
Formula 4: Require each member to discuss the group's deliberations with
associates, if any, in his/her own unit of the organization before reaching a consensus.
Then report back their reactions to the group.
Formula 5: Invite one or more outside experts to each meeting on a
staggered basis and encourage the experts to challenge the views of the core members.
Formula 6: At least one member should play devil's advocate at
every general meeting of the group to challenge the testimony of those who advocate the
majority position.
Formula 7: Whenever the issue involves relations with rival
organizations, devote a sizable block of time to a survey of all warning signals from
these rivals and write alternative scenarios on their intentions.
Formula 8: When surveying alternatives for feasibility and effectiveness,
divide the group from time to time into two or more subgroups to meet separately, under
different chairmen. Then come back together to hammer out differences.
Formula 9: Hold a "second-chance" meeting after reaching a
preliminary consensus about what seems to be the best decision to allow every member to
express al his/her residual doubts and to rethink the entire issue before making a
definitive choice.
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CAREER PLANNING
