Decision-making training in Lausanne · canton of Vaud“We discussed it as a team”: why groups often miss what each member knows

We invite the right people precisely because each holds part of the picture. Yet the final decision often looks like the one we would have taken without a meeting. Is the problem the participants, or the way a group processes information?

What the literature establishes

Garold Stasser and William Titus (1985, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) gave groups a decision whose best option only appeared when information spread across members was pooled. Groups mainly exchanged information everyone already held, and mostly missed the best option. The authors called this a “hidden profile”: the answer exists within the group, but no one sees it alone.

The mechanism: shared information has a structural advantage

Information known to all simply has more chances of being mentioned: several people can raise it. It is also confirmed by others as soon as it is said, which makes it more credible and rewards the person who says it. Information held by one person, by contrast, has only one chance to surface and receives no confirmation. Dennis Stewart and Garold Stasser (1995, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) showed that explicitly recognising who is expert in what improves the flow of such unique information.

The hasty conclusion

It is tempting to infer that we just need to “communicate better” or discuss longer. The meta-analysis by Li Lu, Y. Connie Yuan and Poppy Lauretta McLeod (2012, Personality and Social Psychology Review) qualifies this reflex: the bias towards shared information is robust, and groups that escape it owe this mainly to the structure of the discussion — assigned roles, explicit pooling — rather than to goodwill or time spent together.

What decision research adds

The problem is not only surfacing information but letting it count. When a preference forms early, contradicting elements are discussed more briefly and judged less reliable. Work by Stefan Schulz-Hardt and colleagues (2006, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) indicates that genuine initial disagreement among members favours discovering the best solution, more than an initial consensus. (our executive and employee training programmes)

The limits of the data

Most of these studies use laboratory groups, often students, facing tasks where the right answer is known in advance. In a real team, information is rarely so neatly distributed, and hierarchy, shared history or political stakes weigh on what each person is willing to say. The mechanisms are solid; their size in a given organisation remains an empirical question.

A practical check in Lausanne

Before the next decision meeting, ask each participant to send in writing one item they believe only they know about the topic, then open the session with these items before anyone states a position. Over three meetings, note how many of them changed the option chosen. It is a simple measure we suggest to management teams in Lausanne. To go further: explore the Decision-making training in Lausanne in the canton of Vaud, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.

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