The exercise was designed so that everyone is assigned to an executive position in PB Technologies. Then, everyone has to choose his or her candidate individually before we attend the executives meeting to come up with a single candidate. My position in the organization was the VP of Marketing. Once I received the exercise’s handout, I read it carefully, compared the three candidates’ resumes and then decided to nominate Suzanne T. Valdes for the Senior VP of Finance and CFO position.
I based my decision on the fact that she has the most related work experience and personality to the position, EMBA and she is an insider, which I believe is a very important quality for that position. My team consisted of six members. We started our discussion by taking a poll. We were split equally between Kristin and Suzanne. Since nobody supported Nancy, we dropped her profile from our discussion. Then, the two sides tried to convince each other with their choice.
We both performed a reaction known as the commitment and consistency principle, which explains that “a person who takes a stand encounters pressures to behave consistently with that commitment”. Another example of commitment and consistency principle is that Kristin supporters argued that if we promoted Suzanne or Nancy then this might cause friction between them. Therefore, we should support Kristin. This argument does not have any basis from the case. It is possible also that hiring an external candidate to the position would make Suzanne and Nancy angry because they might feel less motivated as nether of them is promoted.
They have no reason to discuss that argument but since they took a position to support Kristin, they feel committed to that position. During the meeting, I have mentioned that the EMBA is probably more suitable for the position but the group convinced me that there is no difference in the materials between EMBA and MBA. The only difference is that in the EMBA classmates are from executive level and sometimes there are more emphasize on workshops in that program. Then, Suzanne’s supporters raised another point that Suzanne is an insider while Kristin is an outsider.
I also said that the CFO has to be a person who knows the company’s operations and financial structure very well so she has to be an insider. Then, Kristin supporters said that she is working on the same position in a peer company and can bring a new insight into the company. They also mentioned that she has international work experience and she is an excellent public speaker. I realized that some group members raised some interesting information about Kristin but I did not pay attention to that.
I have experienced what I later knew as confirmation bias “The tendency to notice, search for, interpret and remember information in ways that confirm our prior beliefs, and to avoid information that contradicts our prior beliefs”. I was only looking to the facts that support my choice and rejected the facts that prefer other candidates. We have spent 30 minutes of discussion and everyone adhered to his opinion. I then decided to change my preference from Suzanne to Kristin.
I realized that Kristin has better leadership skills, and she might adapt quickly to the position because she worked for a peer company as a VP of Finance and has international exposure. In addition, she might bring a fresh outlook into the company. They both have superior qualifications and the differences between them are minor. Then, the group members made their decision based on the majority and selected Kristin. When we returned to the class to get the feedback from the exercise, I have noticed that nine groups preferred Kristin compared to three groups who preferred Suzanne and one group preferred Nancy.
I felt relaxed that I have turned my group choice to the majority. However, Professor Sanford DeVoe explained that there is no right or wrong choice in the exercise. Moreover, he mentioned that most of the groups who chose Kristin did not discuss the unshared information about the other candidates, especially Nancy. I believe that the reason why no one in my group nominated Nancy is that we all know that she forgot to give the credit to her subordinates once the job is completed.
The people who selected Nancy were a minority among their groups, and therefore, they did not influence the majority decision except for one person in a group who convinced his group to choose Nancy. This is a strong evidence of the Common Information Effect “The influence of an item of information on group judgment is directly and positively related to the number of members who held the item before discussion”. Since we all shared a negative information about Nancy, only one group out of thirteen preferred her to get the CFO position.
Then, the Professor asked each group how they managed the meeting. It turned out that most, if not all, groups started the meeting by taking a poll. This way will give the dominant choice more power over the others, and therefore, the minority might hesitate to challenge the majority. This effect is known as conformity “A change in behaviour due to the real or imagined influence of other people”. The Professor explained that if we will make our decisions by taking a poll, then what is the reason to meet? We can do this online or through any other technological media.
Taking poll at the beginning has three major effects. First, options that do not obtain sufficient votes are most likely to be eliminated from the discussion. Second, announcing preferences is a public commitment to a belief and any trial to turn people from their commitment becomes more challenging. Third, team members will experience the confirmation bias i. e. will search for, interpret, and remember information that support their choice and neglect information that contradicts with their choice. One mistake I made in the exercise is that I did not share my unshared information with the group.
I have supported Suzanne but did not raise the fact that she had completed the managerial leadership program sponsored by the company. There are two reasons behind that. First, I thought that everyone has that information so they already included it on their analysis. The second reason is that I undervalued that information. When we came back to the class and the professor presented who has that information on his sheet, my team was shocked that I did not share it with them. If I knew that such information would influence some members to change their preference to Suzanne, I definitely would have shared it.
I have learned from the exercise that sharing information at the beginning with teammates, no matter how unimportant it appears to us, is a very important step toward making successful group decision. I have prevented the team members who have different mentalities, capabilities and backgrounds from processing that information, and as a result, bringing a new insight into our discussion. Before the exercise, I thought that my team management skills are decent and objective. I felt that taking a poll at the beginning is more efficient and very useful way to eliminate undesirable choices.
This exercise has prompted me to reconsider the way I used to manage group meetings. From now on, I will start meetings by asking everyone what they know about the available choices rather than asking about which one they support. Then, I will proceed by having the group analyze the polled information and assigning a value or a weight to every piece of information based on its relevance to the organization goal. This approach helps to reduce subjectivity. After we spend enough time discussing the available options, I will take a poll to know what is everyone preference.
Then, I will spend the rest of the time to convince the minority; otherwise I will go with the majority choice. Group decisions have proven to be more effective than individual decisions for two main reasons: pooling and elaboration of information, mindsets, and perspectives. In my group meeting, I realized that unshared information was not discussed as much as the shared information, and therefore, did not influence the group decision. If we don’t implement these two techniques in our group meetings, then we will lose the advantage of group decisions and group meetings will turn out as a cost to our organizations.
