[Sigia-l] "Team work" not what's cracked up to be?

[Ziya Oz]

The best practice of team work and group brainstorming have often been
preached here. I like apple pie, too, but there seems to be, gasp, doubters.
>From today's Wall Street Journal / Cubicle Culture column:

The popularity of brainstorming results in part from corporate America's
knee-jerk faith in teams. In fact, the father of brainstorming, advertising
executive Alex Osborn, advocated using people to storm a corporate problem
"in commando fashion." And let yourself be labeled a "nonteam player," and
you might as well start your own one-person consultancy.

But teams aren't necessarily so great. "There are so many things people do
in management because they think it's good, but there's no evidence for it,"
says Paul B. Paulus, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at
Arlington. "Teamwork is one example. Brainstorming is another." Prof. Paulus
conducted research on the number and quality of ideas of four people
brainstorming together versus four people brainstorming by themselves.
Typically, group brainstormers perform at about half the level they would if
they brainstormed alone....

David Perkins, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,
warns that sometimes group sessions can result in one person's bad idea
tainting and limiting the range of others' ideas. "The best way to get good
ideas is to get people to write them down privately and then bring them in,"
he says. You want group diversity but no more than five to seven people or
you risk ending up with "coblabberation."


Also an academic paper:  Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: A
Meta-Analytic Integration

"Generally, brainstorming groups are significantly less productive than
nominal groups, in terms of both quantity and quality."

http://tinyurl.com/pdaop

When's your next brainstorming/groupthink/design-by-committee session
scheduled? ;-)

----
Ziya

Usability >  Simplify the Solution
Design >  Simplify the Problem