"During the dialogue process, people learn to think together - not just in
the sense of analysing a shared problem, or creating new pieces of shared
knowledge, but in the sense of occupying a collective sensibility, in
which the thougths, emotions, and resulting actions belong not to one
individual, but to all of them together."
This led to a "discussion" around the possibility of creating an
environment where Group-think could occur. So the questions are:
How can one ensure that group-think does not occur when a group
participates in regular dialogue sessions? And is it essential to have a
"devils advocate", or does the dialogue process itself have a built-in
safeguard against group-think? I suspect the later but I'm not confident
that I'm right.
[Host's Note: Group-think... I believe this is the tendency of a group to
narrow it's range of thinking, not consider alternatives, become blind to
failure-modes, and become over confident in the work of the group because
1) everyone sees others agreeing and 2) people think "someone else must
have considered that..." It's a 70's theory, and I don't recall the
academic who named it. ...Rick]
Regards
Peter
Peter H. Jones
Peopletronics Limited
PO Box 30 451, Lower Hutt, NZ
Level 5, 22 The Terrace, Wellington, NZ
Tel. 64 4 569 8875. Fax: 64 4 569 8881, http://www.Peopletronics.co.nz
--"Peter H. Jones" <phj@actrix.gen.nz>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>