Mind Tools Newsletter 46 - 11 April 2006

Think for Yourself. Perform as a Team! This newsletter is published by Mind Tools Ltd, of 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London, EC1V 4PY, United Kingdom. To contact us, please email us from this page. You have received this newsletter because you have subscribed to our double opt-in newsletter. To unsubscribe, just click the link at the bottom of the email se sent you. If you are not already a member and you would like to subscribe, please visit http://mindtools.com/subscribe.htm.

Think for Yourself. Perform as a Team!

Welcome to our April 11th Newsletter!

from James Manktelow & Kellie Fowler of MindTools.com.
Mind Tools: Essential Skills for an Excellent Career!

Contents: In This Issue... What's New Pareto Analysis Mind Tools Store Combating Groupthink A Final Note

Last issue, we asked you to identify your favorite "mind tools". We asked you to nominate two of your favorite tools, and also the one you'd most like to recommend to your boss!

A big THANK YOU to everyone who replied! We had an amazing response, some great tools nominated, and some very revealing tips for all you bosses out there! We'll announce the winning tools (and readers) in the next issue.
This is why it's worth reviewing your motivation skills from time to time. However well you're doing, you'll often find ways to get even better. You and your team will enjoy the difference that makes!

This issue features one of the popular runner-up tools from our survey: Pareto Analysis - a tool that helps you get maximum benefits from your effort.

What it does is help you prioritize, by helping you value what you are trying achieved. The results can be quite illuminating: Whether you are overwhelmed by your to-do list or planning a major project, Pareto analysis will help you focus your efforts to best effect!

Also in this issue, we give you a new tool to help you combat Groupthink. Groupthink happens when team members just “follow the crowd” rather than using their better judgment. This can destroy a team’s ability to make good decisions. At its worst, when the risks are high, it can cause disastrous, even fatal, decisions to be made simply because individual team members feel unable to break from the crowd.

All manner of organizational groups can suffer the effects of Groupthink. Whatever teams and groups you work with, this tool is sure to help you spot and avoid Groupthink, and so contribute to better (and safer) decision making.

This is one of three new tools at the Mind Tools site in the last two weeks. The other two are “Belbin’s Team Roles” and “The Wheel of Life”. The Team Roles article gives you a way of looking at the diversity of outlook found in effective teams, helping you encourage team members to respect different approaches to work. The “Wheel of Life” is a great tool which comes highly recommended by the Mind Tools career and life coaching team: It helps you assess the balance of your life and deciding where to focus your efforts to regain perspective. Try these for yourself and let us know how you get on!

Enjoy this issue, let us know what you think, and have a great week!

James & Kellie

MindTools.com
Mind Tools – Essential skills for an excellent career!

To find out about new tools on the Mind Tools site the moment they’re uploaded, click here to subscribe to the Mind Tools RSS feed (you'll need an RSS newsreader installed), or here to find out more about RSS.

New tools on the Mind Tools site:

• 7th April – Combating Groupthink - Avoiding the sometimes fatal flaws in group decision making
• 4th April 2006 – The Wheel of Life - Finding balance in your life
• 31st Mar 2006 – Belbin's Team Roles - How understanding team roles can improve team performance

Find out about new tools on the Mind Tools site the moment they’re uploaded! Click here to subscribe to the Mind Tools RSS feed (you'll need an RSS newsreader installed), or here to find out more about RSS.

Tools for Success:

Pareto Analysis

Choosing the most important changes to make. 

Pareto analysis is a very simple technique that helps you to choose the most effective changes to make.

It uses the Pareto principle - the idea that by doing 20% of work you can generate 80% of the advantage of doing the entire job*. Pareto analysis is a formal technique for finding the changes that will give the biggest benefits. It is useful where many possible courses of action are competing for your attention.

How to use the tool:

To start using the tool, write out a list of the changes you could make. If you have a long list, group it into related changes.

Then score the items or groups. The scoring method you use depends on the sort of problem you are trying to solve. For example, if you are trying to improve profitability, you would score options on the basis of the profit each group might generate. If you are trying to improve customer satisfaction, you might score on the basis of the number of complaints eliminated by each change.

The first change to tackle is the one that has the highest score. This one will give you the biggest benefit if you solve it.

The options with the lowest scores will probably not even be worth bothering with - solving these problems may cost you more than the solutions are worth.

Example:

A manager has taken over a failing service center. He commissions research to find out why customers think that service is poor.

He gets the following comments back from the customers:

1. Phones are only answered after many rings.
   
2. Staff seem distracted and under pressure.
   
3. Engineers do not appear to be well organized. They need second visits to bring extra parts. This means that customers have to take more holiday to be there a second time.
   
4. They do not know what time they will arrive. This means that customers may have to be in all day for an engineer to visit.
   
5. Staff members do not always seem to know what they are doing.
   
6. Sometimes when engineers arrive, the customer finds that the problem could have been solved over the phone.

The manager groups these problems together. He then scores each group by the number of complaints, and orders the list:

• Lack of staff training: items 5 and 6: 51 complaints
• Too few staff: items 1, 2 and 4: 21 complaints
• Poor organization and preparation: item 3: 2 complaints

By doing the Pareto analysis above, the manager can better see that the vast majority of problems (69%) can be solved by improving staff skills.

Once this is done, it may be worth looking at increasing the number of staff members. Alternatively, as staff members become more able to solve problems over the phone, maybe the need for new staff members may decline.

By carrying out a Pareto Analysis, the manager is able to focus on training as an issue, rather than spreading effort over training, taking on new staff members, and possibly installing a new computer system.

Key points:

Pareto Analysis is a simple technique that helps you to identify the most important problem to solve.

To use it:

• List the problems you face, or the options you have available
• Group options where they are facets of the same larger problem
• Apply an appropriate score to each group
• Work on the group with the highest score

Pareto analysis not only shows you the most important problem to solve, it also gives you a score showing how severe the problem is.

Making a point of motivating people is a challenge in and of itself. Once you decide you are up to it, however, you too will reap the rewards and benefits. This creates a momentum that will help you and your team achieve great success.

*This is only one application of this important 80/20 principle, which shows the lack of symmetry that almost always appears between work put in and results achieved. This can be seen in area after area of competitive activity. The figures 80 and 20 are illustrative - for example, 13% of work could generate 92% of returns. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist who noted that approximately 80% of wealth was owned by only 20% of the population. This was true in almost all the societies he studied.

Mind Tools Store

• The Mind Tools E-book: All of the tools on the Mind Tools website in one convenient, easily-downloadable, easily-printable PDF file. We have excluded advertising to enhance clarity and have formatted sections to be easy to read, print and use. More >>
  
  
• Make Time for Success: Learn 39 essential personal effectiveness techniques that help you bring your workload under control and maximize your productivity, so that you can make the most of the opportunities open to you. More >>
  
  
• How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You: Learn the 48 simple but essential skills you need to become a top leader in your industry. More >>
  
  
• Personal Coaching from Career Excellence Professionals:Find career and life direction, bring your job under control, build self-confidence and put yourself on the path to long term success with a Mind Tools coach. Our coaches give you the focused personal coaching you need to make the very most of your career and life. More >>
  
  
• Design Your Life Design the life you want to live. Set the clear, vivid, powerful goals you need to live it to the full. More >>

New Tool :

Combating Groupthink

Avoiding the sometimes-fatal flaws in group decision-making.

Have you ever thought about speaking up in a meeting or some other type of group setting and decided against it because you did not want to appear unsupportive of the group's efforts? Or led a team in which the team members were reluctant to express their own opinions? If so, you have probably been a victim of "Groupthink".

Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when the desire for group consensus overrides people's common sense desire to present alternatives, critique a position, or express an unpopular opinion. The desire for group cohesion effectively drives out good decision-making and problem solving.

Two well-known examples of Groupthink in action are the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster and the Bay of Pigs invasion. Engineers of the space shuttle knew about some faulty parts months before takeoff, but they did not want negative press so they pushed ahead with the launch anyway. With the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy made a decision and the people around him supported it despite their own concerns.

The term "Groupthink" was coined by Irving Janis in 1972 when he was researching why a team reaches an excellent decision one time, and a disastrous one the next. What he found was that a lack of conflict or opposing viewpoints led to poor decisions, because alternatives were not fully analyzed, and therefore groups did not gather enough information to make an informed decision.

How to spot Groupthink

Janis suggested that Groupthink happens when there is:

• A strong, persuasive group leader
• A high level of group cohesion
• Intense pressure from the outside to make a good decision.

In fact, it is now widely recognized that Groupthink-like behavior is found in many situations and across many types of groups and team settings. So it's important to look out for the key symptoms, which are listed in figure 1:

Figure 1: Symptoms of Groupthink

Rationalization:

This is when team members convince themselves that despite evidence to the contrary, the decision or alternative being presented is the best one. "Those other people don't agree with us because they haven't researched the problem as extensively as we have."

When a team member expresses an opposing opinion or questions the rationale behind a decision, the rest of the team members work together to pressure or penalize that person into compliance.
“Well if you really feel that we’re making a mistake you can always leave the team.”

Complacency:
After a few successes, the group begins to feel like any decision they make is the right one because there is no disagreement from any source.
“Our track record speaks for itself. We are unstoppable!”

Moral High Ground:
Each member of the group views him or herself as moral: The combination of moral minds is therefore thought not to be likely to make a poor or immoral decision. When morality is used as a basis for decision-making, the pressure to conform is even greater because no individual wants to be perceived as immoral.
“We all know what is right and wrong, and this is definitely right.”

Stereotyping:
As the group becomes more uniform in their views, they begin to see outsiders as possessing a different and inferior set of morals and characteristics from themselves. These perceived negative characteristics are then used to discredit the opposition.
“Lawyers will find any excuse to argue, even when the facts are clearly against them.”

Censorship:
Members censor their opinions in order to conform.
“If everyone else agrees then my thoughts to the contrary must be wrong.”

Information that is gathered is censored so that it also conforms to, or supports the chosen decision or alternative.
“Don’t listen to that nonsense, they don’t have a clue about what is really going on.”

Illusion of Unanimity:
Because no one speaks out, everyone in the group feels the group’s decision is unanimous. This is what feeds the Groupthink and causes it to spiral out of control.
“I see we all agree so it’s decided then.”

How to Avoid Groupthink

The challenge for any team or group leader is to create a working environment in which Groupthink is unlikely to happen. It is important also to understand the risks of Groupthink - if the stakes are high, so must be the effort to ensure good decision-making and group outcome.

To avoid Groupthink, it is important to have a process in place for checking the fundamental assumptions behind important decisions, for validating the decision-making process, and for evaluating the risks involved. For significant decisions, make sure your team does the following in their decision-making process:

• Explores objectives
  
• Explores alternatives
  
• Encourages ideas to be challenged without reprisal
  
• Examines the risks if the preferred choice is chosen
  
• Tests assumptions
  
• If necessary, goes back and re-examines initial alternatives that were rejected
  
• Gathers relevant information from outside sources
  
• Processes this information objectively
  
• Has at least one contingency plan.

There are many group techniques that can help with this, including the "Mind Tools" listed below. By using one or more of these techniques to accomplish aspects of the group's work, you will vary the group's ways of working, and so guard against Groupthink and help make better decisions.

Figure 2: Tools That Help You Avoid Groupthink: Group Techniques: Brainstorming Helps ideas flow freely without criticism. Nominal Group Technique Allows each group member to contribute individually, so mitigating the risk that stronger and more persuasive group members dominate the decision making process. Six Thinking Hats Helps the team look at a problem from many different perspectives, allowing people to play "Devil's Advocate". The Delphi Technique Allows team members to contribute individually, with no knowledge of a group view, and with little penalty for disagreement. Decision Support Tools: Risk Analysis Helps team members explore and manage risk. Impact Analysis Ensures that the consequences of a decision are thoroughly explored. The Ladder of Inference Helps people check and validate the individual steps of a decision-making process.

How to Overcome Groupthink

However, if Groupthink does set in, it's important that you recognize and acknowledge it quickly, so that you can overcome it and quickly get back to functioning effectively.

Follow these steps to do this:

1. Even with good group decision-making processes in place, be on the look out for signs of Groupthink, so you can deal with them swiftly.
   
2. If there are signs of Groupthink, discuss these in the group. Once acknowledged, the group as a whole can consciously free up its decision making.
   
3. Assess the immediate risks of any decision, and the consequences for the group and its customers. If risks are high (for example risk of personal safety), make sure you take steps to fully validate any decision before it is ratified.
   
4. If appropriate, seek external validation, get more information from outside, and test assumptions. Use the bullets above as a starting point in diagnosing things that needs to change.
   
5. Introduce group techniques and decision-making tools, such as the ones in Figure 2, to avoid Groupthink in the future.

Key Points

Groupthink can severely undermine the value of a group's work and, at its worst, it can cost people their lives.

On a lesser scale, it can stifle teamwork, and leave all but the most vocal team members disillusioned and dissatisfied. If you're on a team that makes a decision you don't really support but feel you can't say or do anything about it, your enthusiasm will quickly fade.

Teams are capable of being much more effective than the individual but, when Groupthink sets in, the opposite can be true. By creating a healthy group-working environment, you can help ensure the group makes good decisions and manages any associated risks.

Group techniques such as Brainstorming, the Nominal Group Technique and Six Thinking Hats can help with this, as can other decision making and thinking tools.

"Avoiding Groupthink" is just one of the leadership skills taught at MindTools.com. For our leadership section, click here. Click here for more.

A Final Note From James

Pareto Analysis is a great runner-up on the winning tools list. When you're swamped with tasks competing for your attention, it's a great way of picking the ones that give the greatest return. This technique can quickly take away a lot of the pressure that you face, particularly when compared with just doing a little bit of everything.

As this issue "goes to press", I've been previewing the full results of our "Success Tools" survey. I'm glad to see (if not a little relieved!) that some of my all-time favorite tools are high up in your list of favorites too! I'm looking forward to sharing the details with you in the next newsletter issue in two weeks' time.

In the meantime, look out for our new "Mind Tools Review" supplement next week. In this first issue we feature an outstanding thinking support and mapping software tool, MindGenius. (This launch is just slightly delayed from first-advertised in the last newsletter!)

With these newsletters "bursting at the seams", the "Mind Tools Review" brings new space, every month or so, for in-depth reviews of career development products and services.

Until then, wishing you a successful week!

James & Kellie

James Manktelow & Kellie Fowler
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