groupthink

This is an interim definition, one that will be added to and altered from time to time. It draws heavily on my experience from business, including, in particular, the retrograde changes which happened when  female CEO left an organisation (which no longer exists) and her replacement was a male, who went back to a penny pinching numbers focus - apparently without any clue about how demotivating that was for most people at the company, who were engineers who had chosen their career about the opportunity to be of service, rather than excitement about attaining an 80% utilisation rate, or being orgasmic at the prospect of profits increasing from an unacceptable 10% to a superlative 15% (I never have understood that: ANY profit still means you are ahead, and 10% is, in my view, completely acceptable).

I can well see why so many people have been advocating about the benefits of inclusivity / diversity on boards, as it breaks this sort of stupid thinking ... and I can see why it is resisted so vehemently, as these sorts of views, particularly having to deal with emotional aspects with sensitivity, fundamentally challenge the world view of the emotionally-impaired / immature people who seem to find themselves on boards in too-high numbers (there should be a few there to ensure the hardness of accounting is properly considered, but they should be a minority).

However, that sort of group think often finds itself accumulating in other parts of the organisation - such as admin people who, through their daily or near daily use and familiarity with the systems they put together to suit the way they think, either do not understand why other people have problems with their systems, or reuse to understand - or put up a defensive pretense of not understanding. I've often thought that others should sneak in the beloved grandparents/aunts/uncles of those people, and see how they feel when people they love have trouble - although that thought more often occurs in the context of IT people, who I consider should always test their systems on the oldest and most decrepit PC in the organisation before releasing them for everyone else. (There are also some fatal assumptions made in this context as well, such as IT people asking if everyone has a lap top and being advised by managers "yes", when that isn't the case - as has occurred to me repeatedly.)

This particular form of group think becomes dangerous in the context of travel, whether for work or personal reasons, if those doing the organising base it around what they would like and consider acceptable, and fail to consider, let alone properly comprehend, the needs of those with illnesses (such as myself - and, as I write this, I have just come back from a trip where I experienced problems with asthma one night because I no longer travel with Ventolin because of the aggression shown towards me by airport security staff over having Ventolin a few years ago [and if they've changed their behaviour on this now, it is a case of too little, too late] ) or those who have survived sexual assault (such as myself) and thus dread the security cretins (they're not all bad - I know some people from various parts of the security industry, but most are both ignorant, and actively trained in an anti-diversity form of thinking) in the air travel industry or those who are members of minorities (such as myself - and I am including myself and all other women in that, as we are minorities in some nations) and may experience cultural and legal problems in other nations and at airport security checks as a result.

Group think also occurs in political parties - which, to some extent, is inherent in the nature of a political party, but it can exacerbate and/or continue problems of the type I discussed when posting about political preservationists (aka uber conservatives). Probably the only person I know who managed this well is Abraham Lincoln, with his "Team of Rivals". On a smaller scale, I am pleased that the lobby - sorry "community activist group" I was involved with in the late 90s had a real mix of views (the existence of that mix was not owed to me, I should make clear): I consider that had a good deal of the credit for the long lasting benefit of what we acheived then.

That group is also a good lead-in to the other area I see a lot of groupthink: gender stereotypes. On the plane I was travelling on last night I saw one group of young women's whose mannerisms and appearance was all straight out of "Dolly" magazine and soaps - as was that of a number of airline staff.

Well, more to come from me later, but it is also worth reading the Wikipedia article on this topic - particularly the comment in the definitions section that it is not simple conformity. (Type III is the form I have most often come across, and I consider the stater of World War Part One is another example the early researchers could have usefully looked at.)