OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE DECISION MAKING

Faulty decisions are not only possible with group-think process alone. Infact, we can observe faulty decisions with early stages of any decision process.

Elbing (1978) has identified several roadblocks that can impede managerial effectiveness in arriving at the most suitable decision:

The tendency to:

1. Evaluate before one investigates. Early evaluation prevents inquiry into a fuller understanding of the situation
2. Equate new and old experiences. This often causes managers to look for what is similar rather than what is unique in a new problem
3. Use available solutions, rather than consider new or innovative ones
4. Deal with problems at face value, rather than ask questions that might explain reasons behind the more obvious aspects of the problem. 
5. Direct decisions toward a single goal. Most problems involve multiple goals that must be handled simultaneously.
6. Confuse symptoms and problems
7. Overlook unsolvable problems and instead concentrate on simpler concerns.
8. Respond automatically or to act before thinking.

Problems like these often cause managers to act in haste before the facts are known and often before the actual underlying problem is recognized or understood.

Strategies to overcome these barrier to effective decision making:

1. Each member to be a critical evaluator of various proposals.
2. When groups are given a problem to solve, leaders can refrain from stating their own position and instead encourage open enquiry and impartial probing of a wide range of alternatives.
3. The organization can give the same problem to two different independent groups and compare the resulting solutions.
4. Outside experts can be invited to group meetings and encouraged to challenge the views of group members.
5. At every group meeting, one member could be appointed as a devil's advocate to challenge the testimony of those advocating the majority position
6. After deciding on a preliminary consensus on the first choice for a course of action, schedule a second meeting during which members of the group express their residual doubts and rethink the entire issue prior to finalising the decision and initiating action

In other words, if groups are aware of the problems of group-think, several specific and relatively simple steps can be taken to minimize the likelihood of falling victim to this problem.