Why does it work?
Consultative decision making has, as its foundation, the theory that collective intelligence creates and implements better solutions than could individuals working alone. This effect is referred to as group synergy, when the result is greater than the sum of individual contributions.
Consultative or team decision making is effective because, as E.O. Wilson states , “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.” He goes on to say that “the world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely." Following similar lines of thought, Erwin Schrodinger indicates that “it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion” of just about any subject. Alvin Toffler adds: "We need people who can see straight ahead and deep into the problems. Those are the experts. But we also need peripheral vision and experts are generally not very good at providing peripheral vision."
But even if the subject matter is not particularly complex, the advantages of team thinking can be objectively measured. John Kolstoe undertook two studies to attempt to measure the synergy obtained if the participants employed a consultative decision making methodology. Individuals without previous experience in consultative decision making were individually tested using 4 sub-tests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). They were then instructed in the consultative decision making methodology, and subsequently employed this methodology to arrive at a new decision, and the team decision was assessed using the same WAIS standard. Both the similarities sub-test (assessing how well the individual or group can see relationships) and the comprehension sub-test (measures the understanding of how and why things work and the best thing to do in a given situation) showed significant improvement when consultation was employed. In the case of the sub-test of com¬prehension, the score earned through consultation was two standard deviations higher than the com¬posite results of the independently administered scores (71.4 percentile to 99.4 percentile).”
1 Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Random House, 1998, p.269
2 Professor Erwin Schrodinger, What is Life?, Trinity College, Dublin, 1944
3 Alvin Toffler, an American writer (Future Shock, Third Wave…) and futurist.
4 Kolstoe, John. Developing Genius, Getting the Most out of Group Decision Making. 1995. George Ronald.
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