Meetings Make You Dumber

Maximum Prophet writes "Robert Heinlein once said that the committee was the only life form in the universe with three or more bellies and no brain. MSNBC reports that his statement may have some statistical truth to it. Researchers are finding that meetings are actually bad places to be creative. You're not actually 'dumber' when you're in the meeting, just more likely to lose your creative edge. Studies have now shown that, as collaborative primates, the more often a possibility is mentioned the more likely the group is to go along with it. Individuals placed by themselves were more likely to come up with imaginative alternatives to products, for example."

Comments

hmmm

[User 956]

Meetings Make You Dumber... Researchers are finding that meetings are actually bad places to be creative. You're not actually 'dumber' when you're in the meeting, just more likely to lose your creative edge.

Sounds like someone wrote this writeup while in a meeting...

Re:hmmm

[cperciva]

Sounds like someone wrote this writeup while in a meeting...

Not at all. The title is a very creative interpretation of the story.

Point of Article: Avoid Group Think

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of the article wasn't that meetings are bad. The point was that group think at meetings is bad. The example they gave was that if people go off and develop a list of ideas on their own, the combined list of ideas is longer than if people develop a list of ideas together in the group.

There are two points that are important here. First, a group of people is likely to develop more ideas than a single person regardless of whether the group develops the ideas together or separately. Second, when it comes to choosing one idea from the list of many possible ideas, a well organized group is going to make a better choice than a single individual. In fact, the biggest problem in a poorly run group is that one person makes all the decisions so it is equivalent to a single individual make the choice.

That was basically the point of the article: for a group to be effective it needs to be organized to allow everyone in the group to have input.

Re:Point of Article: Avoid Group Think

[drooling-dog]

The problem is that in a meeting you are on a social and political stage, however small. It's often not just about what idea is best, but rather whom you're going to support (for reasons that may have nothing to do with the idea being discussed) and how you want the group to perceive you. I know that on more than one occasion I've kept my doubts about a proposal to myself because I didn't want to be perceived as, well, a doubter (which really I am)...

Meetings are not meant to be creative

[Timesprout]

Their function is to seek consenus, bring us all up to speed, get everyone reading from the same page, allocate division of labour etc.

Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative

[rbanzai]

Perhaps SOME meetings are not meant to be creative, and are just for information sharing but many meetings ARE meant to be creative. Many meetings are intended for problem-solving, for example, and creativity can be quite useful so you don't want to stifle it.

I work at an ad agency where by definition we have Creative Meetings where creative concepts are going to be brainstormed.

Meetings are not all simply to seek consensus, etc...

Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative

[not-enough-info]

Synergize your intellectual capital in a heads-up actionable game plan by leveraging mission critical low-hanging fruit that's just outside the box. It's a win-win-win for everybody!

Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative

[bgfay]

Their function is to seek consenus, bring us all up to speed, get everyone reading from the same page, allocate division of labour etc. But of course, the first reason for having any meeting is to make the person calling the meeting feel or seem important.

At least, that's how it works in my school system.

Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative

[markov_chain]

Heh you will like this:

Adventures of Action Item, Professional Superhero

Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative

[Brickwall]

Wielded by people who get angery when someone doesn't take the time to learn their profession language, but they won't take time to learn someone elses profession language.

Management talks that way, and it makes sence within it's context, learn it or whither.

Whither, indeed. Perhaps you might take the time to learn English.

The primary reason for this

[geekoid]

is that in private corporations there is no way to give a eral opionon and not be fired if it isn't what the boss had envisioned.
The boss want's hoola-hoops with razors on the inside? then you better be a team player and commit 125% to that goal.

You think it's dangerous? not a team player, get out
You think there isn't a market? not a team player, get out
you mention that 100% is pretty much all someone can give without physically harming them selves? not a team player, get out
Forgot to clean the fridge?not a team player, get out

Re:The primary reason for this

[hotdiggitydawg]

If you're working in an environment like that, why wouldn't you want to get out anyway?

Every place I've worked (so far), I have in fact been rewarded for coming up with better alternatives to the boss's suggestions, and I've never once been punished for disagreement. Thing is, you have to earn their respect before you can do that...

Re:The primary reason for this

[ivan256]

So you get out and get another job.

Believe it or not, there are workplaces where it is safe to voice opposition as long as you do what you're told once the decision is made. Your boss shouldn't mind that you tell him it's a bad idea to port your product to the latest trendy language for no good reason, but once he decides that's what the company is doing, you better deliver, 'cause that's what you're being paid for. It's when you refuse to drop it once a decision has been made that you should have to worry about losing your job.

In my experience, most workplaces are like this, and there is always some whiner that doesn't know when to drop it and get to work who thinks that their opinion (rather than their behavior or performance) is what got them in trouble.

Re:The primary reason for this

[TuringTest]

Mob mentality (which is essentially what you see in meetings - people forced to make a decision as a whole rather than as individuals) is known to be 'stupider' than a single person acting rationally as a general rule.

On the other hand, "swarm" decision-making based on the aggregate of individual decisions is known to be smarter than any single person. The point is not avoiding meetings or group work, the point is avoid common pitfalls and adopt a working style that deliveries results.

Scientific Evidence Already Stated

[ShrapnelFace]

It's called "Group Think" and it was a major factor of evidence in the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia. We've already read this, been over this, and done this. Is this a presentation of a new idea, or an idea restated in a new light?

Either way, it's always a good idea to realize that in most cases, people are in a situation to satisfy themselves first, then those who are most related to that self next.

I find that in meetings I lead, I spend more time chairing the discussion than growing the actual discussion from the seeds of creation. Group think tends to be the by-product of that one person in your meeting who wont let go of their own idea and continues to bludgeon the group into submission.

Re:Scientific Evidence Already Stated

[Hijacked Public]

I don't know what 'major factor of evidence' means in your context but I think Microsoft Powerpoint should shoulder more blame for the Columbia disaster than groupthink. Maybe I have been reading too much Edward Tufte though.

You may want to consider that your definition of groupthink is overbroad. Part of how a business motivates its employees is to convince them to align their personal goals with those of the company. Done properly, satisfying oneself in a business setting means furthering the goals of the company.

Rather than say that gets lost due to groupthink I would say that it gets lost amid all the ass covering and finger pointing that often goes on. In Columbia's case, Lockheed Martin's main goal during the investigation was not to uncover the actual cause but defend against any possibility that they might have been at fault. They offer up test results of their insulation hitting a part of the shuttle that the actual insulation didn't hit, then claim that their insulation could not possibly have caused enough damage to be a problem on reentry. Maybe groupthink led people to believe them, I don't know.

So many companies are managed for the short term that this kind of thing is nearly impossible to prevent. The shuttle blows up, someone looks at a spreadsheet that shows the shuttle business is only 3% of revenue, so whatever future business LHM might have with NASA is sacrificed for the goal of protecting the company.

Certainly Explains Congress

[Shadow Wrought]

Just one loong meeting...

It's not meetings, it's how/why they are held

[rbanzai]

Meetings by themselves don't have problems. It's meetings that are flawed.

1. Meetings that should never have been held. They serve no real purpose.
2. Meetings with no structure, and no one to lead them
3. Meetings where there is an agenda but no one follows it and no one guides it
4. Meetings that run overtime due to mismanagement and no one is willing to conclude it.
5. Meetings that start late because there is no respect for the time of the attendees.

These are just some of the things that make me dread meetings. Over the last 6 years out of the many meetings I've been obliged to attend maybe five were really useful.

Say....

[ReidMaynard]

Guys --

I just scanned this great article on MSNBC..Let's have the whole team meet at 4:30, I've got some ideas...

--The Boss

How to have a sucessful meeting

[Maximum Prophet]

Let me recommed the book, "How to Run a Successful Meeting in Half the Time" http://www.amazon.com/How-Successful-Meeting-Half- Time/dp/0671726013/sr=8-7/qid=1172256632/ref=sr_1_ 7/102-8911026-2154546?ie=UTF8&s=books, It's a quick read, and does have good advice.

The author gives the an example of a good meeting, the opening of the old TV show, "LA Law", where the lead attorney came in, laid his pocket watch on the table, then asked everyone to bring him up to speed with what they were doing. The pocketwatch was a device to let the audience know that he valued his time. Always, the meeting was over by the first commercial break. If real life corporate meetings could be more like this, I think we'd get a lot more done.

"We" have decided to comment

[popo]

After much discussion we have decided to comment on this absurd proposition that a group cannot write anything creative. Towards responding to this accusation, we propose a set of action items which will form a roadmap for our final response which will be distributed and posted to Slashdot by next Thursday afternoon.

The first action item will be to define what "creativity" actually is. This issue will be discussed at a CD meeting (Creativity Definition Meeting) tentatively scheduled for Monday at 9:45 am. Donuts and coffee will be served.

The results of the CD meeting will be compiled into a compelling Powerpoint presentation and displayed at our weekly Status Meeting on Wednesday at 4:30pm. Please note, we'll all be going out for drinks promptly following the meeting.

Thursday will consist of a full day of intensive focus groups, follow up discussions, and satellite meetings which will put a fine point on the issue of our supposed inability to generate new and compelling ideas. That full day of meetings will be compiled in a pink sheet for distribution to top management prior to our official Slashdot response.

Thank you.

Re:Nice Timing

[truthsearch]

Your meeting is so boring I can feel my brain atrophy. Oh, wait, that just might be the slashdot effect.

Never fear!

[spun]

Your boss just called. We're having a breakout session at lunch to determine what to do about all this brain atrophy. There will be lettuce and cheese sandwiches with generic food-service chips. See you there!

In a perfect world, maybe.

[khasim]

But the Reality is that most meetings suck, are mis-managed and a waste of time. Why these things are true does not matter. They are and they aren't going to change.

So, avoid meetings as much as possible. Use email and the telephone and finally, talk to people in their cubicles/offices. Use the one-to-one means of communicating as much as possible. People will give you more information and more SENSITIVE information in person than they will in a group.

Once you have all of that and you've run through the email/telephone/cubicle cycle a few times, then call a short meeting to make sure that everyone sees everyone else agreeing in public to what they've agreed to.

Meetings suck. Avoid them.

Re:In a perfect world, maybe.

[Lemmy Caution]

Which meetings? For which purpose? Are you developing a new product? Are you in an IT team producing a support document for users? Are you a research scientist trying to track the work of your assistants, or talking with investors? Are you part of a legal team?

I know there's an IT and/or software development/engineering lens through which a lot of Slashdotters view the world. But many of the assumptions don't migrate to other contexts well. A receptionist, an IT tech, an industrial designer, and a financial analyst all have very different relationships to meetings, information, and creativity.

What works for me

[cyberfunkr]

Meetings are going to happen. It's really tough to avoid them so you might as well have a plan for when they occur.

When I am in charge of making a meeting happen I try to use this little trick: Everyone has X amount of time before the meeting, usually in days. At that meeting be ready with 3 solutions to the problem, and rebuttal arguments for why #1 and (hopefully) #2 were mentally scrapped by the time you figured out option #3.

Now the meeting rolls around and I have say 5 people all ready to go with up to 15 different answers, but before we've even started most of those have been rejected.

We'll still cover all the solutions so we can weed out duplicates, shoot down people's third choice that someone else already thought of and realized a shop stopper ("...And that's why this idea will work." "Well, it would work, but where are we going to get tights in our size at this time of night?"), and correct any assumptions for people's self-realized blockers. ("At first I thought we could do this, but we need Marketing's help and they're buried." "Actually, Marketing just finished our last major project so we have a few days breathing room to help out.")

This keeps the "group think" out of the process until later in the process when the playing field has already narrowed down to 2-3 solid ideas.