IS A MEETING WORTH THE TIME? BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE GROUP DECISION MAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS

Time pressure impacts the information that emerges in a group discussion. Executives need help managing the challenges posed by time pressure to arrive at the best decisions. In particular, we address two common biases that impact the group decision making process: the confirmation bias and the common information effect. Strategies are presented for overcoming these two biases, particularly the advantage of privately collecting information from group members within a meeting to surface unique information and disconfirming information. We also acknowledge that an executive’s goal may not always be to surface information; rather, an individual may be attempting to use a group meeting to push through a particular decision. We discuss the role of time in accomplishing this objective as well.