How can management meetings reduce errors in important decisions?
Group discussions can favor shared information and majority preferences. Use research on dissent and premortems to collect independent views, challenge assumptions and identify paths to failure.
How can meetings reduce judgment errors?
Three mechanisms can help when important decisions are made in meetings: collect individual views and information before discussion, deliberately introduce a contrary view, and assume the plan has failed before identifying the reasons. Experimental research found that meetings tended to focus on information everyone already knew and preferences held by the majority, while groups with dissent reached better decisions. Also compare your plan with the outcomes of similar past cases.
Why can meetings reinforce a one-sided view?
Meetings offer the advantage of pooling information held by different people. Yet an experiment on group decision making (Stasser and Titus, 1985) showed that discussion can become dominated by information members shared from the outset and information supporting their existing preferences. Participants received different subsets of information before choosing a candidate. Instead of selecting the best candidate that a full pooling of information would have revealed, groups chose the candidate preferred by a majority before discussion. Discussion did not correct participants' distorted impressions; the impressions persisted.
In management meetings, sales, production and finance staff also often hold facts known only to them. Unless those facts are raised, the meeting becomes a place to confirm the majority view rather than pool information.
Does dissent improve decision quality?
An experiment involving 135 three-person groups completing a personnel selection task (Schulz-Hardt and colleagues, 2006) found that groups with unanimous preferences before discussion almost never reached the correct answer. Groups whose initial preferences differed had a clearly higher rate of correct answers, even when none of the members initially preferred the correct option. Performance was higher still when the person supporting the correct answer was a dissenter.
Whether dissent came from one person or several did not change decision quality. The researchers explained that dissent deepened discussion and reduced one-sided consideration. In organizations where dissent does not emerge naturally, assigning someone a dissenting role is an option. People who disagree must not be penalized for doing so.
What is the basis for a premortem, and how is it conducted?
A premortem assumes, before a decision is finalized, that “this plan has failed a year from now,” then identifies why. An experiment on explaining future events as though they had already occurred (Mitchell, Russo and Pennington, 1989) found that explanations of events presented as certain were longer and contained more specific accounts of how events unfolded. Treating failure as a fact can therefore make it easier to identify concrete paths to failure rather than vague concerns.
Premortem steps and precautions
| Step | What to do | Precaution |
|---|---|---|
| Prepare | Share the proposed decision and objectives on one page | Avoid creating the impression that the conclusion is already fixed |
| Assume failure | Announce that the plan has failed badly | Present failure as a fact, rather than a possibility |
| Write individually | Have everyone quietly write down reasons for failure | Do not hear senior people's views first |
| Share | Ask each person to present one reason at a time | Record everything without criticism |
| Respond | Decide responses and monitoring indicators for the most serious causes first | Assign owners and review dates |
Why do plans so often become optimistic?
A paper on judgment and risk taking (Kahneman and Lovallo, 1993) explains that decision makers tend to see a problem as unique and disregard historical statistics. An inside view that bases forecasts on plans and scenarios can therefore produce excessive optimism. The alternative is an outside view: first examine how long similar past projects actually took and what they cost. For the problem of collecting only success stories, see using other companies' success stories. For the reliability of customer research supporting a decision, see customer survey sample size.
How do different meeting formats compare?
Comparison of meeting formats
| Format | Strengths | Limitations | Suitable decisions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open discussion followed by consensus | Fast and gives participants a sense of involvement | Gravitates toward shared information and majority preferences | Decisions that are easy to reverse |
| Independent views submitted before discussion | Reveals information held only by particular people | Requires more preparation | Decisions with dispersed information |
| An assigned dissenting role | Exposes weak assumptions | Dissent may become merely formal | Decisions on which consensus forms too quickly |
| Premortem | Identifies specific paths to failure | Less useful after implementation has begun | Major investments and decisions that are difficult to reverse |
What should be recorded after a decision?
Record the assumptions behind the decision, the expected outcomes and the point at which it will be reconsidered. This makes it easier to distinguish a mistaken judgment from bad luck when outcomes become known. One page is enough; keep it somewhere all participants can access. The Korea Research Institute of Business & Branding treats objectivity and learning as core values: distinguishing assumptions from facts, reviewing implementation results and carrying them into the next judgment. See business research methods for comparing conditions, costs, expected effects, risks and implementation sequences across alternatives. For examples applied to strategy decisions, see management strategy advisory.
Frequently asked questions about management decision meetings
When is the best time for a premortem?
Just before a decision is finalized, while the plan can still be changed. Once implementation begins, it becomes harder to act on the problems identified.
No one disagrees when the chief executive attends. What can we do?
Collect written views before discussion and establish a rule that the chief executive speaks last. Taking turns in the dissenting role is another option.
Will this make meetings longer?
These methods are not needed for every decision. Restricting them to major investments or decisions that are difficult to reverse makes the use of time more worthwhile.
What if dissent delays the decision?
Set the decision deadline and name the final decision maker in advance. Dissent is a mechanism for exposing weak assumptions, rather than preventing a decision.
References
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Pooling of unshared information in group decision making: Biased information sampling during discussion” (Stasser and Titus), 1985. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.48.6.1467
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Group decision making in hidden profile situations: Dissent as a facilitator for decision quality” (Schulz-Hardt and colleagues), 2006. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.6.1080
- Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, “Back to the future: Temporal perspective in the explanation of events” (Mitchell, Russo and Pennington), 1989. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.3960020103
- Management Science, “Timid Choices and Bold Forecasts: A Cognitive Perspective on Risk Taking” (Kahneman and Lovallo), 1993. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.39.1.17