The flipside of being the best

Group consultations are always believed to be the best process for problem solving in organisations as it results in a wide range of solutions than most individuals can design on their own. These solutions are not only better than those of the average group member but also then the groups best problem solver working alone. 

Most of the time a leader - who, by virtue of greater experience or wisdom or skill, is deemed the ablest problem solver of the group- fails to ask for inputs from the team members. Equally dangerous, members of the team often relinquish problem-solving part to the leader and fail to provide him/her important input.

Result: 

Suboptimal solutions, bad choices, wrong directions and avoidable errors

Why not go alone:

• The lone problem solver can't match the diversity of knowledge and perspectives of a multi-person unit that includes him.
• The solution seeker who goes alone loses another advantage - the power of parallel processing. Whereas a cooperating unit can decentralize the many sub-tasks among its members. This reduces the time spent on the effort and the mental fatigue

Watson and Crick:

They were the winners of noble prize for revealing the double-helix structure of DNA. James Watson in his interview revealed that it was due to their dual efforts that they were able to solve the problem ahead of highly accomplished rival researchers. According to Watson the smartest of the lot was Rosalind Franklin, a British scientist working in Paris at that time. Watson commented, "She was so intelligent that she rarely sought advice. If you're the brightest person in the room, you're in trouble."

Captain-do-it-all:

It refers to the tendency of a leader to assume all responsibility and also the tendency of the team members to opt out of responsibilities that are truly theirs. Examples are regularly found in multi piloted aircraft where the captain takes wrong decisions.

I find it very true even in the television channels where the prime responsibility is taken by a person although there are many to take some load off from him. He looks after the tiny nit-bits of every dept and is in a constant frenzy state. His assistants also find it to their liking and siphon off from their due responsibilities. As a result disaster happens and all get the razor's edge.

Solution:

Leaders must collaborate unfailingly with the team members to arrive at a solution. Some of you may think this will risk the poor outcome of the decision of the committee. But the recommendation here is not to employ vote taking while making hard business decisions. The final decision is for the leader to take. That's what they get paid for.

Thus the leader must make the commitment that, even though many recommendations may not be followed, each is important for arriving at - what we used to say in microeconomics class - Pareto optimal solution

Bibliography:

• "Managing for excellence" by David Bradford and Allan Cohen 
• "The discipline of getting things done" by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
• "The curse of a superstar CEO" by Rakesh Khurana