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When we're confronting a vexing problem, we often gather a group to brainstorm. We're looking to get the best ideas as quickly as possible. I love seeing it happen—except for one tiny wrinkle. Group brainstorming usually backfires.
In brainstorming meetings, many good ideas are lost— and few are gained. Extensive evidence shows that when we generate ideas together, we fail to maximize collective intelligence. Brainstorming groups fall so far short of their potential that we get more ideas—and better ideas—if we all work alone. As the humorist Dave Barry quipped, "If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be: 'meetings.' " But the problem isn't meetings themselves—it's how we run them.
[...] Collective intelligence begins with individual creativity. But it doesn't end there. Individuals produce a greater volume and variety of novel ideas when they work alone. That means that they come up with more brilliant ideas than groups—but also more terrible ideas than groups. It takes collective judgment to find the signal in the noise and bring the best ideas to fruition.
Source: time.com
From HIDDEN POTENTIAL by Adam Grant
I am sure most of you have spent time "brain storming" ... was it productive or wasted time ?
(Score: 4, Informative) by tangomargarine on Thursday October 26 2023, @03:36AM (1 child)
It's always better to pitch all the simple dumb ideas out there first when troubleshooting, rather than spend 4 hours dissecting the system, only to find out you needed to powercycle the damn thing.
But yeah. History is littered with problems that could've been solved if somebody hadn't been afraid to speak up; one example that springs to mind is various airplane crashes where the copilot didn't want to contradict the pilot who had an incorrect perception of what was going on. So they changed the culture to make problem-solving in the air more cooperative.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 26 2023, @12:44PM
The whole "pilot in command, my decision is not to be questioned" is a good thing in the air, as long as the PIC is not an arrogant asshole.
There is a similar cultural challenge with M.D.s in medicine. I'm glad to hear that pilot training culture has matured. M.D. training should be too, but seems to actually be running more in the direction of selecting arrogant assholes for M.D
training and then developing and enhancing that arrogance through school, residency and practice.
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