We would like things to be simple. This applies to group processes as much as anything else, as reflected in my earlier post, X Ways to Y Your Meetings. However, to obtain superior results, it is sometimes necessary to use group processes that are complex. In my post on the False Wisdom of Crowds(?) I referred to a process intervention in which “small, interacting groups were able to perform significantly better than their most proficient members … when aided by an enhanced, iterative, ‘estimate-feedback-talk’ process [that involved] integration of group facilitation, decision modeling, and information technology.” In response to a recent inquiry, the specifics of this enhanced, iterative, estimate-feedback-talk process are shown below, although some of the steps, divorced from the rest of the article, will be somewhat cryptic.
Improving the Accuracy of Group Judgment: A Process Intervention Combining Group Facilitation, Social Judgment Analysis, and Information Technology
by Patricia Reagan-Cirincione
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 58, No. 2, May 1994, pp. 246-270.
Table 1: Overview of the Process Intervention
INDIVIDUAL | |
1. Estimate |
Specification of weights and functional relations of predictors |
2. Feedback |
Display of statistically estimated weights and functional relations |
3. Estimate |
Reconciliation of statistically estimated and intuitively specified weights and functional relations |
GROUP | |
4. Feedback |
Display of reconciled weights and functional relations |
5. Talk |
Facilitated group discussion |
6. Estimate |
Facilitated specification of weights and functional relations |
7. Feedback |
Display of statistically estimated and intuitively specified weights and functional relations |
8. Talk |
Facilitated group discussion |
9. Estimate |
Facilitated respecification of weights and functional relations |
10. Feedback |
Display of statistically estimated and intuitively specified weights and functional relations |
11. Talk |
Facilitated group discussion to final consensus judgment policy |