Latest news with #groupthink
New York Times
5 days ago
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
The Apocalypse Is Here, and It's One Big Cult
CULTURE CREEP: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse, by Alice Bolin The modern age is overwhelming. There are so many things to look at, so many apps to track our calorie intake, our periods, what our friends and emotional-support celebrities are doing. There's so much suffering, so much trauma and so many men laundering myths of greatness in an effort to control our daily lives. How does an individual make sense of it all? According to Alice Bolin's new book of essays, 'Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse,' the answer is cult thinking. 'All the decisions are exhausting,' Bolin writes. 'Some part of us longs to cede control and have someone else tell us what to do.' And so we have, by and large, given in to lives 'shaped by groupthink and indoctrination.' In the process, we — every one of us, according to Bolin — have played right into the hands of a capitalist system looking to keep us complicit and wring our bank accounts dry. Bolin's first book of essays, 'Dead Girls,' explored the American obsession with victimized women. Now, Bolin turns her eye to the average American's social manipulation by industries that created everything from the 'startling regression' among women in the 1950s back into the confines of the home, to Gamergate and the rise of Donald Trump. In a world where our every data point is collected by tech giants, 'even our rage against the machine becomes just another way to feed the machine.' Bolin outlines the book's three main subjects as 'cults, corporate thought control and the end of the world as we know it,' and she covers these in seven roving essays all tied up in the Catch-22 of trying to exist as an individual in a hyperconnected age. Often these wanderings make it difficult for the reader to identify a central gathering point for Bolin's musings, though she manages to hit at some sharp truths. 'Foundering' excoriates the 'American mania for founder myths,' of which Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk are only the most modern iterations. 'The narrative impulse comes from our own epic origin story,' she writes of the founding fathers, 'whose inspiring opening salvo, a poetic ode to all men being created equal, was maybe more marketing than actual game plan.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Forbes
26-05-2025
- General
- Forbes
Think And Lead Outside-In To Counter Groupthink And Insular Cultures
Groupthink Insular cultures produce groupthink, don't evolve as fast as others, and thus pose an existential threat to organizations. Instead, think and lead from the outside-in to ensure your culture and organization continue to evolve and thrive. Irving Janis explained that groupthink happens when group pressures and a drive for unanimity suppress dissent and critical evaluation. One example is the disastrous decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger, reenacted for this video. As I wrote earlier, culture is the collective character of the individuals in an organization. Organizations are made up of individuals, each with their own character. The way they behave together, relate to each other, the attitudes and values they share, and the environment they create is the organization's culture. In his recent book, 'On Character: Choices that Define a Life,' Stan McChrystal argues that character is a personal choice made up of a combination of convictions and discipline. In his words, 'Convictions set the direction of our intentions, but discipline provides the impetus to move' – especially when the choices are hard. For example, 'When our belonging to a group is on the line, many of us will say or do things we otherwise wouldn't.' He then told me that, 'In working on our book on Risk, we studied the Bay of Pigs and Janis' conclusions about Groupthink. Most of us have seen it many times and I'd add that the pressures of a hierarchical structure (like the White House, Army, or many Corporations) makes it easy to fall into – a huge trap.' Thus, groupthink behavior happens in organizations with cultures with a bias to work with people just like us (importance of being accepted by the group,) and a responsive/avoid basic failure attitude (as opposed to openness to making intelligent failures while learning through experiments.) As Janis puts it, these organizations and groups tend to: The ultimate issue is Darwinian. Those focused on being accepted by the group and afraid to experiment are, almost by definition, not responsive to changes, not evolving, and not going to survive as others evolve to serve customers better. Outside-in thinking is closely related to outside-in leadership. Outside-in leaders know that the true measure of success is not in the organizations, infrastructure or people they attract and develop, but in what those organizations, infrastructure and people get done for others. They start by thinking about those others and the conditions they face. This should play out differently depending upon the core focus of your organization. If your organization is focused on: Get to the ground truth Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, described the need for leaders to know 'ground truth.' This is unvarnished, unfiltered truth about the harsh reality. Powell got his from chaplains, sergeants major, inspectors general, and normal soldiers. Get your ground truth from data, facts, and first-line supervisors. They are close enough to the front lines to know the truth, one step back so they can see the forest and not just the trees, and far enough away from you not to be afraid of you. Get it from your customers (service-focused,) outside innovators (design), suppliers (production,) and others solving similar problems (delivery/distribution.) Seed dissent Make sure your groups have people that will dissent – and protect them. These could be people that play Devil's advocate or, like Shakespeare's fools, challenge ideas and thinking. Conduct double skip-level lunches Identify the top-box, highest-rated performers three levels below you. Set up one-on-one lunches with them. Read their reviews just before each lunch. Greet them and say, 'I've read your review. You're doing amazing things. I'd love to learn more about what you're doing.' Just that. Then listen. They'll feel great. You'll learn what good is. They'll tell you the truth about what they think. The people three levels down aren't part of your 'group' and, like front line supervisors, are too far away from you to be afraid. Click here for a categorized list of my Forbes articles (of which this is #946)
