Group Decision Making

Group Decision-Making Helps with Innovation

Collecting diverse opinions from others is essential and helps to foster innovation.  The diverse opinions of others are key in making decisions and brainstorming innovative ideas. Group decision-making techniques involve motivating others and engaging others to make more outcomes likely to succeed. Group decision-making is a strategy that involves group member interactions to enhance the quality of a collective decision.

This post is about group decision-making and the techniques that you can take to support the group decision-making process.  This post will explore the group decision-making techniques that will help innovators to come up with new ideas.  Group decision-making is also known as collective thinking or decision-making, which is when a collective effort is made to make a decision rather than an individual making the decision.

Four of the most common decision-making techniques are as follows;

1. Brainstorming
2. The Delphi technique
3. The Nominal Technique
4. The Stepladder Technique

The Delphi technique is used to for decision making, and it involves gathering a panel of subject matter experts to complete questionaries individually, and their responses will be shared anonymously with the panel to allow for further discussion and debate.  This technique involves gathering all of the input and ideas from the group and then further decomposing those into smaller pieces so that they can be discussed collectively.  The Delphi technique is mainly used when researchers do not have all of the information or expertise for the problem, and other techniques cannot be used. This technique is best suited for situations that require a consolidated effort from other experts, and individual judgment must be tapped into and combined (Powell, 2003).  The Delphi technique outperformed the brainstorming technique because it brought in subject matter experts and a further review of the exact problem and all possible solutions.

Brainstorming is also another group problem-solving technique; however, it involves being spontaneous and thinking of creative solutions and ideas instantly.  Brainstorming allows you to literally think outside of the box in real time.  Each group member is encouraged to think out loud of any suggestions and ideas to solve a challenge or a problem.  Group members generate ideas interactively to further increase the number of ideas generated (Putman & Paulus, 2009).

    The nominal technique is a group decision-making technique that is very similar to having a group discussion.  The difference is that group members are asked to provide a response to questions posed by a moderator, and then the moderator will collect and notate all responses.  The participants will then prioritize their ideas or suggestions. In a recent study in 2017 by Ven & Delbecq they did a comparison and discovered that the nominal and delphi techniques were both equally effective and both clearly are more effective than conventional interacting groups.

    The Stepladder Technique is a group decision-making tool that helps each member enter their ideas into the group.  The tool encourages all members to contribute, by providing an individual suggestion or idea before being influenced by anyone else.  The idea behind this technique is that all members will participate in the core group, and then one after the other in a stagnated approach to present their solution.  Each group member presents their solution first before they discuss the task with the group members.

When managed correctly, group decision-making is one of the most effective techniques to use.  It can help you to better understand the advantages and disadvantages. Group decision-making can also help to foster an environment that is creative and helps to support innovation.  This technique allows you to get direct feedback from subject matter experts.  This also helps to ensure that the decision-making is a shared responsibility within the group. 

 

Reference

Powell, C. (2003). The Delphi technique: myths and realities. Journal of advanced

nursing, 41(4), 376-382.

Putman, V. L., & Paulus, P. B. (2009). Brainstorming, brainstorming rules and decision

making. The Journal of creative behavior, 43(1), 29-40.

Ven, A. H. V. D., & Delbecq, A. L. (2017). The effectiveness of nominal, Delphi, and 

    interacting group decision-making processes. Academy of Management Journal, 17(4), 605-621.