A recent article at trainingzone.co.uk looked at some of the problems groupthink can cause.
People
If management is made up of people from similar backgrounds with the same formative experiences in life, you can hardly expect to find a wide diversity of opinions amongst them. Ideally a team should contain people from a variety of cultural settings. Research suggests there is less chance of groupthink if people with different opinions from the mainstream are not afraid to speak up and colleagues are prepared to take their views seriously.
Mindset
Intuitively people like to surround themselves by others of a like mind. This is natural enough in itself in both social and professional contexts; however, the danger from a business perspective of taking it too far is that a “yes people” mentality takes over and anyone who dares to deviate from this is considered a traitor to the cause. Yet once perfectly valid objections are casually brushed away and management begins to believe in its own infallibility, you are on a perilously slippery slope. Bear this in mind the next time you sense groupthink might be dominating at your meetings and if you sincerely believe something is wrong, stand up and say so.
If you want specific examples of the potentially harmful consequences groupthink can have, it is sufficient to recall Enron in 2001, the financial meltdown of 2008 or the more recent emissions fiasco at Volkswagen.
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