Why Rooms That Agree Quickly Produce the Safest Work
Twenty minutes into the meeting, heads are nodding. The agenda is full and getting to execution this quickly feels like progress. There is a temptation to move on before asking how much of the room's knowledge the favourite has actually encountered. Agreement can be pleasant long before it is informative.
There is good reason to bring several minds together. The value depends on hearing and using the different things each participant knows.
Garold Stasser and William Titus tested this problem in 1985. Their small groups held a mixture of shared information and facts known only to individual members. Pooling the latter was needed for the best decision. The groups tended to discuss what everyone knew instead, neglecting the private pieces and making decisions shaped by the shared information.
A familiar point gets nods. An unfamiliar one can complicate the picture the room is already forming. If agreement is the main sign of progress, people have a reason to stick with what is easy to discuss. The fact held by one person may never reach the decision, although that fact was part of the reason to invite them.
A room that agrees quickly has often done exactly this. The members may have built a direction from shared knowledge before examining what each person could add.
In creative work, category conventions are the material everyone brings. A competitor's campaign, the last approved concept, the guidelines: these are easy to discuss because nobody needs to explain them. A proposal assembled from this familiar material can gather support before the room has heard anything less familiar.
The less familiar observation has a harder entrance. A colleague heard a customer use unexpected words for the problem; another saw an odd response in a different market. Each needs a little explanation. If the agenda has already turned to execution, offering that explanation means interrupting everybody's progress.
Before the next agenda item, check what is still in people's notes. The fact that changes the choice may be sitting there unmentioned.
Charlan Nemeth and colleagues compared a genuine dissenter with an assigned devil's advocate. The genuine disagreement led to more original thinking. The person playing the role mainly elicited a defence of the group's initial position. An expected debate could therefore take place while leaving the original thinking largely undisturbed.
An awkwardly expressed objection deserves a question about its basis. The observation behind it may be useful even when the opening sounds unhelpful. Hurrying to resolve it can dispose of both.
In the usual agenda, the polished proposal gets the opening slot and much of the time. New information must compete for what remains. Give it a slot before the proposal has gathered momentum and the discussion has become a question of execution.
Independent notes made before the opening presentation change what is available to discuss. Several positions reach the room together. A confident speaker's proposal can then be examined alongside the independent positions.
Participants can send in something they suspect the others don't know. A customer remark entered on the agenda will get a hearing without its owner having to stop a presentation. The format has made the observation part of the work.
The minutes can record what changed during the discussion. An assumption was dropped, perhaps, or new evidence ruled out the favourite. 'Everyone agreed' records attendance at a decision. It says little about how the work improved.
Finished work eventually needs a direction. Once the independent positions and unshared information have had a hearing, choose one. A long meeting is no proof of thoroughness either; the useful question is what the room has examined before it commits.
Hear the independent positions first. Then examine the information people brought and give real objections a hearing. Once that work has been done, choose and get on with it. There is no virtue in prolonging a meeting whose useful disagreements have already been worked through.
After sign-off, an inconvenient fact can sound like a request to reopen everybody's work. Before sign-off, it can save that work. Put the opportunity to hear it into the agenda while changing course is still relatively cheap.
A senior leader's early opinion adds another cost to disagreeing. The room now knows what the powerful person prefers. Someone with conflicting evidence has to challenge that preference as well as explain the evidence.
Let senior people speak last. During the first stage, they can ask what others know and make it safe to examine a real objection. Their judgement then has the full range of positions to work with. Waiting gives them information an early statement might have kept quiet.
Six people repeating shared knowledge leave much of the group's value unused. The same six can bring six distinct perspectives, including the connections between them. The hive's return depends on those contributions reaching the decision.
That is the practical line between collaboration and consensus. The practical test is whether the final direction used knowledge that would otherwise have stayed with one member. If it did, the team has gained something from assembling those six perspectives.
