I’ve been working on getting an MBA. You may ask, “You? An illustrator and designer?” Yes. One day I woke up and realized if I was going to be successful in business, I should know a little more about it.
In my organizational behavior class, we’ve been talking about groupthink. It brought to me reminders of George Orwell and “1984.” Groupthink is when people within a business legitimizes their decisions because everyone wants to get along and think the same way. A company thinks their decisions are fool-proof, only to realize later they were actually foolish.
I thought of a flock of birds all chirping in harmony. Sure, it sounds pretty, but once in a while, shouldn’t one of the birds pipe up and say, “Wait a minute! Is this the best tune for this occasion?”
Creativity can suffer under groupthink. We’re all victims of it. It’s hard to see a book without paper pages. It can be difficult for a business used to printing paper books to try electronic publishing. Publishers can cringe whenever an author embraces self-publishing and questions the old model’s legitimacy. Yet, technology marches on and is challenging groupthink in some rough ways.
What are some ways you escape groupthink? How can you challenge the status quo today?