100 Posts in 100 Days
Early on in this 100 Posts in 100 Days journey, I wrote about team decision making processes in in Post 18: Decisions, Decisions. In the June 24 The Pulse (Post 55), I quoted Dr. Maya Shanker from her podcast about how we assess the quality of decision making. Just a couple days ago, I wrote about the value of a subject matter expert in Post 64: SME.
After the SME post, I received a message from my uncle telling a story that illustrates and ties these ideas together. Frequently, decisions are made by teams. Good decision making is a combination of process and expertise. Good decision making is a combination of collective and individual knowledge. How you use individual knowledge on your team and how you arrive at decisions matters.
This is the story from my uncle:
Back in the mid-90s, I took a 5-6 day class with our senior leadership team. One of the exercises was designed to illustrate how teams often make better decisions than individuals. It’s a “desert survival” scenario where each individual answers a series of questions about what to do if your plane of 20 passengers crashes in the middle of the desert. Should you all stay with the plane? All start hiking to civilization? Or deploy a group of 4 people to find help while the others stay with the plane? You get a list of 20 items that are on the plane. Things like water, soda crackers, a knife, matches, flares, a bottle of whiskey, and so on.
Each individual in the course completes a homework survey about how they would lead and solve this scenario. The next day, in class, teams of 6 people are formed. You answer the survey again, this time as a team. So, you’ve come prepared as an individual and now work together to solve the problem.
During a break in the session, the facilitator scores the individual and team responses to the exercises. Typically, team scores are higher than individual scores.
Except in my team (of course!). The facilitator was puzzled. One member of my team had scored higher than the team. It was something the facilitator had never seen before. So, he asked some questions to understand what might have happened. Guess what? The person who had scored higher than the team was an SME. His role on the senior leadership team was Chief Medical Officer. He knew better than the team what some of the outcomes of certain decisions would be. For example, don’t take the soda crackers. They make you thirsty and you will deplete your precious water. People die of thirst before they die of starvation. The team talked the SME out of some of his correct answers. The team score was ultimately lower than his individual score.
Takeaway:
Teams make better decisions than individuals unless you have an SME.
If you’ve got an SME, your best leadership move is to LISTEN!
Amazing example! Thanks Uncle J!