Recently I saw Adam Grant deliver an online masterclass about rethinking. Grant is a Wharton professor, organisational psychologist, and bestselling author.
This quote caught my eye when he was discussing the concept of groupthink (and emphasising the importance of building a challenge network). So I went hunting for its origin.
Astronaut Mark Kelly uses it frequently in his speeches (he’s husband of gunshot survivor Congresswoman Gabby Giffords). Apparently NASA coined the phrase out of lessons learned after the Challenger and Columbia shuttle accidents.
The phrase is expanded on in Gifford and Kelly’s co-authored book Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope:
“….when you get a group of people together to make a critical decision, groupthink can set in. There’s all this technical information, a critical decision needs to be made, and everyone starts marching in the same direction. There might be some people who think it’s the wrong decision, but they don’t say anything. They just remain a part of the group. We’ve learned that groups can make stupid decisions that no single individual in the group would make”.
Have you ever got caught up in a bad decision driven by groupthink? How do you spot it and what helps you stop it?