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Nobody voted no

How to get real disagreement before you decide · 14 min

In 1961 a president asked his advisers for a yes or a no on invading Cuba. Nobody voted no, though several had doubts. Eighteen months later, the same kind of room argued its way through a nuclear crisis. Why, in experiments, an appointed devil's advocate works less well than you'd think, and three moves to get the real doubts out before you decide.

Takeaways

  • Before the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy polled his advisers and nobody voted no, though several later said they had serious doubts; one aide, Arthur Schlesinger, later "bitterly reproached" himself for his silence.
  • In short group experiments, a genuine dissenter did more to widen a group's thinking than an appointed devil's advocate; a pretend critic can even leave people surer of their first view.
  • This week: for one group decision, speak last, ask "Imagine this has failed. What went wrong?", and ask the person most likely to disagree what worries them before the group meets.

Chapters

  1. Nobody voted no0:17
  2. The same room2:27
  3. The pretend critic4:41
  4. Two fast yeses8:09
  5. Hear it done9:40
  6. Build yours11:08
  7. The answer12:36

References

  1. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum — The Bay of Pigs
  2. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum — Cuban Missile Crisis
  3. Harvard Kennedy School Case Program — Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs
  4. Janis, I. L. — Groupthink: Psychological studies of policy decisions and fiascoes (2nd ed.; 1st ed. Victims of Groupthink, 1972)(1982)
  5. Kramer, R. M. — Revisiting the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam decisions 25 years later: How well has the groupthink hypothesis stood the test of time?(1998)
  6. Stern, S. M. — The Cuban Missile Crisis ExComm meetings: Getting it right after 50 years(2012)
  7. Hayes, J. — Robert Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (accepted manuscript)
  8. Nemeth, C. J., Brown, K., & Rogers, J. — Devil's advocate versus authentic dissent: Stimulating quantity and quality(2001)
  9. Nemeth, C. J., Connell, J. B., Rogers, J. D., & Brown, K. S. — Improving decision making by means of dissent(2001)
  10. Schulz-Hardt, S., Jochims, M., & Frey, D. — Productive conflict in group decision making: Genuine and contrived dissent as strategies to counteract biased information seeking(2002)
  11. Nemeth, C. J., Personnaz, B., Personnaz, M., & Goncalo, J. A. — The liberating role of conflict in group creativity: A study in two countries(2004)
  12. Klein, G. — Performing a project premortem(2007)
  13. Mitchell, D. J., Russo, J. E., & Pennington, N. — Back to the future: Temporal perspective in the explanation of events(1989)