Eight Ways to Reduce Failures

Diverse and dissenting ideas are the nucleus of creativity and innovation. Group leaders can use these eight strategies to elicit these ideas:

. Leaders should focus less on sharing their own opinions and more on collecting information from others — particularly from those with less influence or who might be less comfortable sharing.

. If consensus is emphasized, people are less likely to reveal what they know. Group members who engage in critical thinking do not always get along.

. If everyone in the group is rewarded once there is a successful outcome, members will be more likely to speak up. Cascades will be reduced, and all members will have a stake in reaching a correct group decision.

. By ensuring that people have unique roles or tasks, each person’s contribution to the discussion is unique.

. Groups are more likely to follow a failing course of action than an individual would. Asking what a new leader would do can create a needed critical perspective.

. Studies have found that token devil’s advocacy merely reinforces consensus. Only genuine dissension yields better decisions.

. A second team that takes an opposing position can uncover errors or vulnerabilities in a group’s proposal.

. Group leaders should employ formal methods of obtaining individually held information, such as the Delphi method.

Perhaps the best strategy is to utilize data and analytics as much as possible. Sunstein and Hastie invoke the book , by Michael Lewis, which contends that statistical analysis is more reliable than subjective analysis.