Teamwork, Democracy, and Decisions

Published on Sep 7, 2010, filed under management, misc. (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

As great as democracy is to prevent negative outcomes, as unsuitable is it to achieve “best” outcomes.

Scrapping fifteen drafts, my new strategy to publish more posts, here are two suggestions to achieve better results in group settings. One of them stolen from Malcolm Gladwell, I believe, the other one from myself:

If you ask a group of people for their take on something, each response will influence the responses that follow. That does not exactly mean a smart way to get rid of duplicate responses, no, it rather means you’re not learning about everything the group would come up with when asked individually.

That is the first idea: If you want to really tap a group’s knowledge and creativity, ask each group member individually.

Then, how useful is the feedback you received through individual conversations? You’ll probably learn about very productive but also not so great ideas. One option to mitigate is to have the entire group vote on all (anonymized) items; then take, say, the Top 1–5 to carry on, depending on your needs and the results. Or, if 90% of the group voted on item #2, maybe that’s it and item #2 is the silver bullet. And if earlier sessions were about some general design brainstorming, maybe you like to even look at the Top 10 ideas. Another option is not to carry out a vote on all items extracted from individual meetings but, the necessary expertise assumed, to generously preselect a few items or have items preselected that you then ask to be voted on.

That is the second idea: Democracy by guided voting.

From there it’s a bit easier to make a decision that did not get diluted by committee, and one that is still supported (at least less opposed?) by the group. That decision, as we once learned from Gary Klein, can then be improved towards excellence.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)