Getting overly focused on the last move in a chess game is just one potential pitfall. Our tendency to self-censor, particularly under a certain type of leadership, can lead to another.
Going back to my example (determining how to defend when the enemy could come through a very large pass or a much smaller/narrower pass), if the leader thought they already knew what the enemy was going to do and quelled any 'dissent', they could potentially defend the wrong thing. (Or the right one. That's the trouble here... so long as the person in charge gets it right, nothing appears to be wrong, and everything seems even better than the alternative because you don't have to deal with the frustration of trying to forge a consensus, or that one person who stubbornly disagrees with the plan. But sometimes when you get it wrong, you get it very, very wrong. Instead of hashing out a plan that's more flexible, that may be centered on the main pass but can shift to defending the smaller pass as needed, any attempt to suggest the enemy would take the other pass is squelched. And next thing you know, they're coming down whatever pass you didn't expect, you're defenses are all wrong and you lose. Bigly.)
In that experiment on conformity, it seems that having two or three people agree is enough for everyone else to start self-censoring... which makes this easy enough to prevent (assuming it's not deliberate). Speak up. Let your light shine. If you can provide an alternate opinion early, it generally opens the floor to a true discussion - as opposed to a meeting that rubber stamps someone's predetermined decision. Even if that initial moment has passed, if you have any doubts at all, if you truly question the decision, speak up.
This is not necessarily without consequences. Sometimes people resent you for breaking the perception of a unified consensus. In the case of the Challenger explosion, the one engineer who spoke out about the risk of launching in cold weather had been removed from his job and demoted. People will pressure you for not going along, you may get marginalized, discredited, and ignored. But... would you rather be one of the people who conformed, and went along with a decision that resulted in the explosion of a space shuttle? Or be the person who stood for what you believed in, even if you lost your job? (In case it's not obvious, I'm not trying to tell you the answer. I'm trying to tell you a few things to consider when deciding what you can live with. I want everyone to be able to look at themselves in the mirror with pride, accepting their flaws and faults and being okay with who they are, and any decision that makes that harder is probably something you should think carefully about.)
Knowing this, btw, also means I'm a bit more skeptical whenever I hear someone being marginalized and discredited. Like, it could be a legitimate criticism, or it could also mean that person took a stand and is being penalized for it, and I'd want to see how the person acted for myself before lending any credence to such accusations. If they're discredited for being opinionated, skeptical, and stubborn, well... most of the time I can work with that.
On a related note -
Self-censorship occurs in more situations than just 'we're in a meeting, and two or three people agree already'.
We generally self-censor when we're talking to our boss, which is not exactly a surprise given the power they have over our careers.
This is part of why people in positions of wealth and power, in particular, have to work extra hard on 'getting out of the bubble', or 'developing good lines of communication', or whatever you want to call it. Consider the intel world. Some analyst may write a report taking a strong position on something. They're boss passes it along, but softens it up just a little. They know it's not what they're bosses want to hear, so they try to make it more palatable. The next layer softens it up even more, and so on and so forth, until the intelligence received at the top is a bastardized version of the original assessment. This is a very real risk, and one the intel community tries to mitigate.
People in power generally are too busy to adequately evaluate everything they get. They're deluged in information, e-mails, letters, and the like. That's why they have gatekeepers... but the gatekeepers have to know what to do with the information coming their way. What to pass along, what to handle themselves, what to ignore, and so on and so forth. And even they aren't necessarily getting the straight scoop, since they may have gatekeepers or subordinates of their own.
Getting accurate information means making sure every link in the chain is doing their job correctly. All it takes is one person deciding that "o-rings failing in cold weather is a crock of s***" to keep that risk from reaching the right decision-maker.
You have to have some way of evaluating your gatekeepers, and making sure they're passing along what you need to hear as opposed to what you want to hear.
Going back to my example (determining how to defend when the enemy could come through a very large pass or a much smaller/narrower pass), if the leader thought they already knew what the enemy was going to do and quelled any 'dissent', they could potentially defend the wrong thing. (Or the right one. That's the trouble here... so long as the person in charge gets it right, nothing appears to be wrong, and everything seems even better than the alternative because you don't have to deal with the frustration of trying to forge a consensus, or that one person who stubbornly disagrees with the plan. But sometimes when you get it wrong, you get it very, very wrong. Instead of hashing out a plan that's more flexible, that may be centered on the main pass but can shift to defending the smaller pass as needed, any attempt to suggest the enemy would take the other pass is squelched. And next thing you know, they're coming down whatever pass you didn't expect, you're defenses are all wrong and you lose. Bigly.)
In that experiment on conformity, it seems that having two or three people agree is enough for everyone else to start self-censoring... which makes this easy enough to prevent (assuming it's not deliberate). Speak up. Let your light shine. If you can provide an alternate opinion early, it generally opens the floor to a true discussion - as opposed to a meeting that rubber stamps someone's predetermined decision. Even if that initial moment has passed, if you have any doubts at all, if you truly question the decision, speak up.
This is not necessarily without consequences. Sometimes people resent you for breaking the perception of a unified consensus. In the case of the Challenger explosion, the one engineer who spoke out about the risk of launching in cold weather had been removed from his job and demoted. People will pressure you for not going along, you may get marginalized, discredited, and ignored. But... would you rather be one of the people who conformed, and went along with a decision that resulted in the explosion of a space shuttle? Or be the person who stood for what you believed in, even if you lost your job? (In case it's not obvious, I'm not trying to tell you the answer. I'm trying to tell you a few things to consider when deciding what you can live with. I want everyone to be able to look at themselves in the mirror with pride, accepting their flaws and faults and being okay with who they are, and any decision that makes that harder is probably something you should think carefully about.)
Knowing this, btw, also means I'm a bit more skeptical whenever I hear someone being marginalized and discredited. Like, it could be a legitimate criticism, or it could also mean that person took a stand and is being penalized for it, and I'd want to see how the person acted for myself before lending any credence to such accusations. If they're discredited for being opinionated, skeptical, and stubborn, well... most of the time I can work with that.
On a related note -
Self-censorship occurs in more situations than just 'we're in a meeting, and two or three people agree already'.
We generally self-censor when we're talking to our boss, which is not exactly a surprise given the power they have over our careers.
This is part of why people in positions of wealth and power, in particular, have to work extra hard on 'getting out of the bubble', or 'developing good lines of communication', or whatever you want to call it. Consider the intel world. Some analyst may write a report taking a strong position on something. They're boss passes it along, but softens it up just a little. They know it's not what they're bosses want to hear, so they try to make it more palatable. The next layer softens it up even more, and so on and so forth, until the intelligence received at the top is a bastardized version of the original assessment. This is a very real risk, and one the intel community tries to mitigate.
People in power generally are too busy to adequately evaluate everything they get. They're deluged in information, e-mails, letters, and the like. That's why they have gatekeepers... but the gatekeepers have to know what to do with the information coming their way. What to pass along, what to handle themselves, what to ignore, and so on and so forth. And even they aren't necessarily getting the straight scoop, since they may have gatekeepers or subordinates of their own.
Getting accurate information means making sure every link in the chain is doing their job correctly. All it takes is one person deciding that "o-rings failing in cold weather is a crock of s***" to keep that risk from reaching the right decision-maker.
You have to have some way of evaluating your gatekeepers, and making sure they're passing along what you need to hear as opposed to what you want to hear.
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