Working regenerative with holacracies – systems of self-organizing teams where most decisions are left to the team itself – can be enticing because groups gain more energy and ownership, often resulting in better and wiser work through collaboration. However, there are pitfalls to be aware of. Many examples show that groups can make us dumber. We get caught up in group logic, seeking confirmation from each other to make sure that what we say and do is right. By affirming each other we don’t seek out information that might contradict us. This well-documented psychological phenomenon in organisations leads to poor, incorrect, or even fatal decisions.
Fundamentally, it’s about the group and the leader creating psychological pressure on the individual member, leading them to adapt their viewpoints to align with the group’s and leader’s perception of a given situation. This is known as groupthinking, a state where groups tend to accept a viewpoint or conclusion that represents a perceived consensus in the group, regardless of whether the individual member considers the viewpoint valid, correct or optimal. The consequence can be group pressure marked by psychological insecurity. The groupthinking theory has been used to explain various decisions that turned out to be highly ill-considered. For example the interpretation of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in 2002 before the Second Persian Gulf War, and Denmark’s Mink case in 2020, where groupthinking in the inner circle led to the decision to kill all mink, despite lacking legal basis.
Three main symptoms of groupthinking to be particularly aware of are:
- Overestimation of the group’s power and morality: An illusion of invulnerability that encourages taking large risks. Also, there is a strong belief in the group’s inherent morality.
- Closed-mindedness: The group attempts to rationalize decisions by downplaying warnings or other information that might cause members to reconsider the assumptions behind the decisions.
- Pressure for uniformity among participants: Those with differing opinions tend to self-censor to minimize their own doubts. This creates a shared illusion of unanimity, and self-appointed “mindguards” may emerge to maintain this unanimity.
The consequence of groupthinking is that the group’s actual task is lost, and agreement itself becomes the goal, leading to poor decisions. Alternatives are not explored, and the conditions for the decision to be right are not assessed. Lack of risk analysis and selective information gathering also play a role, where data supporting the chosen decision is emphasized, and alternative decisions are not discussed. This results in a lack of focus on the whole and the subsequent process to make the decision viable.