GroupthinkSteve Shore, MBA, PMP, CSSGBPress to advance .docx

Groupthink
Steve Shore, MBA, PMP, CSSGB
Press to advance
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© 2010 Stephen Shore. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction to Groupthink
2
© 2010 Stephen Shore. All Rights Reserved. 3
Groupthink: Background
• Term from Yale social
psychologist Irving Janis in
1972.
• Researched why a team
reaches an excellent decision
one time, and a disastrous

one the next.
• Groupthink model designed
to help teams prevent bad
decisions.
Groupthink: Background con’d
• Participants have need
for consensus.
• Alternatives not fully
analyzed.
• Decision makers have
desire to be an accepted
member of a group.
4
Groupthink: 8 Symptoms

• A Highly Cohesive Group
1. An illusion of invulnerability creates
excessive optimism and encourages extreme
risk taking.
2. Unquestioned belief in the group‟s inherent
morality. Members ignore the ethical or moral
consequences of their decisions.
Groupthink: 8 Symptoms con’t
• Closed-mindedness
3. People rationalize in order to discount
warnings or other information that might
lead the members to reconsider their
assumptions.
4. Stereotyped views of others.

Groupthink: 8 Symptoms con’t
• Pressures Toward Uniformity
5. Shared illusion of unity.
6. Minimize the importance of counter-
arguments.
7. Direct pressure on any member who
expresses arguments against the group.
8. Members who protect the group from
adverse information.
Part 2: NASA’s History
NASA’s Origins: The Space Race Begins
9
October 4, 1957: The Soviet
Union launches Sputnik.

October 1, 1958:
Congress creates
NASA.
Project Mercury 1961-1963
• 1958: Project Mercury
initiated.
• Mercury 7 astronauts
signed-up.
• Alan Shepard: In space
on May 5, 1961 for 15
min, 28 seconds.
President Kennedy Sets the Stage
11
May 25, 1961: President Kennedy

initiated the Apollo program in a
speech to Congress.
September 12, 1962: Speech to
Rice University.
Project Gemini 1962-1966
Apollo 1 Setback
• January 27, 1967:
Apollo 1 fire during launch
simulation killed "Gus"
Grissom, Ed White, and
Roger Chaffee.
• A review board formed.
• The board noted several
organizational-related

factors that contributed to
the accident.
Apollo Program 1963-1972
December 21, 1968: Apollo 8 circles the moon. Astronauts
read from the Book of Genesis on December 24th.
History Made: Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969
15
Apollo 13
Successes in the 1970s
17

The Shuttle Program Begins
18
The 1980s
The 1980s
The Challenger Disaster: January 28, 1986
Mission STS-51L
The Hubble Telescope Story

The 1990s and the ISS
23
The Columbia Disaster: February 1, 2003
Mission STS-107
Part 3: Lessons Learned
Evaluation of NASA’s Culture
• Culture of invulnerability, built upon
technological successes.
26
• Leadership traditionally based on
technical people that were degreed
in hard sciences, which created a
culture based on common
attributes.

• Promoted “better, faster, cheaper” not “quality, risk, and
safety”.
• Management had a pattern of ignoring or suppressing
constructive conflict.
• Management lost their ability to accept criticism, which led
them
to reject recommendations.
Evaluation of NASA’s Culture
27
• Engineers felt they had to prove that
situations were unsafe, rather than
proving things were safe.
• No consensus on the definition
of risk.
• It is believed that the various project
managers felt more accountable to their managers than to the
overall shuttle program.
• NASA managers evaded safety regulations in order to
maintain
the aggressive launch schedule.

Evaluation of Challenger Disaster
• Launch postponed 3 times. NASA fearful American public
would
regard agency as inept if delayed further.
28
• Challenger launched at lowest temperature in shuttle program.
• Poor communications were vague and open to interpretations.
• Morton Thiokol engineers argued they did not have enough
data
to determine if O-rings would properly work below 53°F.
• Post-disaster analysis revealed probability of disaster > 99%.
• Both NASA managers and engineers knew about O-ring design
flaw since 1977, but never addressed the issue.
• Engineers at Rockwell International expressed concerns about
ice buildup, but managers restated the concerns in a passive
way, leading mission control to disregard the concerns.
• The company stated that „„lower temperatures are in the
direction of badness for O-rings...”
Evaluation of Columbia Disaster

• Disaster tied to management not understanding the tradeoffs
between the conflicting goals of cost, schedule, and safety.
29
• Engineers knew the shuttle was being hit by foam on nearly
every
flight, but decided condition was of no immediate consequence,
and
might be a maintenance problem to be addressed at a later time.
• Unfortunately, many of the checks-and-balances put in place
after
Challenger had been removed in the name of faster and cheaper.
• On the mission‟s 2nd day, engineers suspected there was
damage to
the orbiter. NASA managers decided to limit the investigation
on the
grounds that little could be done even if problems were found.
Groupthink Symptoms Applied to Events
• Having a Highly Cohesive Group: The illusion of
invulnerability
creates excessive optimism and encourages extreme risk taking.
30
• When engineers raised the possibility of catastrophic O-ring
issues, a NASA manager nonchalantly pointed out that this risk
was „„true of every other flight we have had."

• The O-ring seal is a critical failure point without backup. A
NASA manager testified „„we were counting on the backup O-
ring to be the sealing O-ring under the worst case conditions.”
• “Knowing what I know now about gas entering the shuttle’s
wing, do I believe the mission I was on was any more risky than
I thought it was when I took off? No.” Astronaut Mary Ellen
Weber, following May 2000 mission.
Groupthink Symptoms Applied to Events
• Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.
31
• Pressuring People Towards Uniformity:
• Pressure people who expresses counter-arguments.
• Morton Thiokol‟s Senior Vice President urged the Vice
President
of Engineering to ‘‘take off your engineering hat and put on
your
management hat."
• Protect the group from adverse information and “troublesome”
ideas.
• Morton Thiokol‟s expert on O-rings stated to the Rogers
Commission that he ‘‘was not even asked to participate in
giving input to the final decision.”

• In the Columbia disaster, the same engineers that identified
the
problem did not speak-up and express their concerns for fear of
being ridiculed and losing their jobs.
• There is a shared illusion of unanimity because silence means
there is consent.
Preventing Groupthink
• Assign each member the role of “critical evaluator” with
permission – and
encouragement – to freely air objections and doubts.
• Managers shouldn‟t express opinions when assigning tasks.
• Set up several independent groups to work on the same
problem.
• All effective alternatives should be openly examined.
• Members should discuss ideas with trusted people outside of
the group.
• Invite outside experts into meetings. Group members should
be allowed to
discuss with and question the outside experts.
• At least one group member should be assigned the role of
Devil's Advocate.
This should be a different person for each meeting.

Summary
• Mindset is to not rock the boat. Group members avoid
promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus
thinking.
• Ideas are not critically analyzed because members want to
minimize conflict.
• Individual doubts are set aside as few alternatives considered.
• Minimal or no re-examination of alternatives that may have
been initially discarded.
• Expert opinions and “negative” information is rejected.
• In the end, groups make hasty, irrational decisions.
References
• Carveth, Rodney and Claire Ferraris. NASA and the Columbia
Disaster:
Decision-making by groupthink? 2003, Association for Business
Communication Annual Convention.

• Bond, Timothy; Robert Dimitroff; Lu Ann Schmidt.
Organizational Behavior
and Disaster: A Study of Conflict at NASA. June 2005. Project
Management
Journal.
• Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB).
• Bazerman, Max and Dolly Chugh. Decisions without blinders.
Harvard
Business Review. January 2006.

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