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Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter
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(Harvard Business Review ) WISER : Getting Beyond Groupthink To Make Groups Smarter

Cass R. Sunstein, Reid Hastie
LIKE NEW, HARDCOVER
Cass R. Sunstein, Reid Hastie
LIKE NEW, HARDCOVER

RM25.00

Comprehensive Framework That Translates A Company’s Strategic Objectives Into a Coherent Set of Performance Measures.

ISBN 9781422122990
Book Condition LIKE NEW
Format HARDCOVER
Publisher Harvard Business Review Press
Publication Date 9/1/2015
Pages 272
Weight 0.40 kg
Dimension 22 × 14.5 × 2.6 cm
Availability: Out of stock

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☞ Why are group decisions so hard?
 
☞ When do groups make wise decisions?
 
☞ When do they may foolish decisions?
 
☞ What methods can help groups make wiser decisions?
 
Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie explore these questions in this helpful book.
 
According to conventional wisdom, two heads are better than one. In other words, group decisions should be better than decisions made by individuals since there are more people pondering them. Not so, contend Reid Hastie and Cass Sunstein, who cite evidence that committees and boards can be more error-prone than individuals. The authors explain why, and offer ways to improve group decision-making.
 

Since the beginning of human history, people have made decisions in groups―first in families and villages, and now as part of companies, governments, school boards, religious organizations, or any one of countless other groups. And having more than one person to help decide is good because the group benefits from the collective knowledge of all of its members, and this results in better decisions. Right?
 
Back to reality. We’ve all been involved in group decisions―and they’re hard. And they often turn out badly. Why? Many blame bad decisions on “groupthink” without a clear idea of what that term really means.
 
Now, Nudge coauthor Cass Sunstein and leading decision-making scholar Reid Hastie shed light on the specifics of why and how group decisions go wrong―and offer tactics and lessons to help leaders avoid the pitfalls and reach better outcomes.
 
In the first part of the book, they explain in clear and fascinating detail the distinct problems groups run into:
● They often amplify, rather than correct, individual errors in judgment
● They fall victim to cascade effects, as members follow what others say or do
● They become polarized, adopting more extreme positions than the ones they began with
● They emphasize what everybody knows instead of focusing on critical information that only a few people know
 
In the second part of the book, the authors turn to straightforward methods and advice for making groups smarter. These approaches include silencing the leader so that the views of other group members can surface, rethinking rewards and incentives to encourage people to reveal their own knowledge, thoughtfully assigning roles that are aligned with people’s unique strengths, and more.
 
With examples from a broad range of organizations―from Google to the CIA―and written in an engaging and witty style, Wiser will not only enlighten you; it will help your team and your organization make better decisions―decisions that lead to greater success.
 
A notorious example in history was John F. Kennedy’s cabinet giving the green light to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Various cabinet members harbored serious doubts about the policy, but did not express their view at the time, assuming that everyone else was in favor. Thus JFK was deprived of valuable information that might have prevented the debacle.
 
All human beings have certain biases — such as optimism bias, loss aversion, and self-serving bias — but groups tend to amplify those biases, and that leads to inaccurate decisions. It happens because group decisions increase confidence and decrease disagreement. Group deliberation makes people more unified even in their private views; thus groups are polarizing in moving members toward one viewpoint that they did not all start with.
 
Committees are more likely to make solid decisions when three factors are present. Members have accurate social perception in reading people’s emotions; when most members of the group actually participate instead of a few; and when there are a significant number of women in the group.
 
There are ways to improve group decision-making. One way is for the chairman to elicit information that people have, by making sure younger or newer members are encouraged to talk and that diverse perspectives are welcomed. Since a leader taking a strong advocacy position will inhibit discussion, good leaders should be slow to take positions and should not do most of the talking. The chairman should recognize the value of anxious people who are cautious about what could go wrong, as opposed to happy talk people telling the leader what he wants to hear.
 
Groups need to redefine what it means to be a team player: Those who are most valuable to the team are individuals who contribute something that the others are missing, such as critical scrutiny. Hastie and Sunstein make a convincing case that a better group culture means more successful groups.
 
in a nutshell, all around us, we see the impact of group decisions those that have worked, and those that have not. This book is for anyone involved in the decision making process. In Wiser, public intellectual, legal scholar, and former White House official Cass Sunstein, along with Reid Hastie of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, make a provocative and intelligent critical assessment of our current state of group decision making.
 
And they offer better mechanisms for problem solving in the future. Sunstein and Hastie show how groups can more effectively use information their members have to display increased creativity, rather than falling into groupthink.
 
They outline the reasons why groups fail and go on to identify effective new mechanisms for collective problem-solving and decision-making. Mixing ideas from management and the social sciences, the authors address the widespread use of non-deliberative decision making methods both in business and the public sector. With examples from organizations as varied as Google and the CIA. A clever and witty read.
 
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About the Authors:
 
Cass R. Sunstein is a US legal scholar and served as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. He is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and coauthor, with Richard H. Thaler, of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
 
Reid Hastie is an expert on the psychology of decision making, especially by groups. He has authored or coauthored several academic books, including Rational Choice in an Uncertain World. He is currently the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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