Re: Right Mix for Group? LO3996

JOHNWFIELD@aol.com
Fri, 1 Dec 1995 07:10:08 -0500

Replying to LO3944 --

William J. Hobler, in dismissing my use of the Bay of Pigs group work as
"...the participants, US CIA clandestine operatives, are of a particular
mindset that is almost blind to evidence countervailing their own view.
While they are to a person patriotic they seem to be too much so. Thank
goodness they are a small minority of Americans."

Well, this is not a very-well informed response. One of my graduate
students and I did a very thorough case study of the Bay of Pigs, the
Cuban Missile Crisis, and other like disasters (The Edsel, etc.). We
published these, with extensive documentation and citations.

The decision makers in the Bay of Pigs crisis were as follows:

Dean Rusk (Secretary of State), Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense),
McGeorge Bundy (President Kennedy's Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs), Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., (Harvard University
historian), and Richard Goodwin (who didn't attend but was kept informed);
all members of a "core group of presidential advisers"; along with others
who attended the meetings as follows:

Allen Dulles, CIA Director; Richard Bissell, Deputy Director of the CIA;
Thomas Mann (Asst. Secretary of State ofr Inter-American Affairs), Adolph
A. Berle, Jr., Chairman of the Latin American task force; Paul Nitze,
Assistant Secretary of Defense; Robert Kennedy (Attorney General), and
President Kennedy himself.

It is true that there were some very opinionated people in this group, but
it is hardly correct to say that it was only the CIA. Anyone who cares to
familarize himself with the extensive literature on this subject will be
able to see that it was the group process which accounts for a substantial
part of the bad outcome.

In designing/choosing the Interactive Management processes, we have
designed out the possibilities of any such terrible group process as was
displayed in the Bay of Pigs 3-month deliberations. We have also designed
out the bad features of the Cuban Missile Crisis group activity, as well
as many of the other bad decisions made by groups who used processes
either designed by amateurs or not designed at all.

It is true that much of the bad influence in the Bay of Pigs came from the
CIA, but it is not appropriate to believe that only a small minority of
Americans make really bad judgments. The fact is that there is abundant
scientific evidence to show that no matter what the complex issue and what
group is involved, unless carefully designed and wisely managed group
processes are used, the inevitable result will be bad decisions.
Unfortunately most of the relevant literature remains unknown to
professional consultants, organizational development people, the business
literature, and most of the engineering literature.

Much of the trouble starts with the fundamentals of linguistics, and the
nature of prose, but of course let's don't worry about these little
details.

--
JOHN N. WARFIELD
Johnwfield@aol.com