Groupthink: From the Bay of Pigs to the boardroom

An article from the Comprend Insights series.

In 1961, very early in the presidency of John F Kennedy, the United States launched an attempt to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba but it ended in disaster. A small force of soldiers landed on the country’s southern shore and they were easily defeated by the Cuban defence forces. The main landing took place at the Bay of Pigs, and, later, the term Groupthink was coined to try to describe what went wrong there.

Firstly

“How could we have been so stupid?” was JFK’s question after he and his close group of top advisors had blundered into the fiasco.

A decade later, Yale University professor Irving Janis wrote an article which tried to explain the Bay of Pigs as well as other US military events which had poor outcomes.[i] In the article he coined the term 'groupthink' to describe a phenomenon where people will strive for consensus within a group, even setting aside their own personal beliefs, and adopt the opinion of the rest of that group

Since then, groupthink has come to be recognised as a defective behavioural trait at board level. It describes situations where there is a lack of diverse thinking and when no one is prepared to rock the boat by challenging the group pressure to reach unanimity.

So what happened at the Bay of Pigs?

Soon after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, relationships between Cuba and the United States deteriorated, not least because the new government confiscated private property, much of it owned by US interests. By early 1961, the US had severed diplomatic relations with Havana, and planning for an invasion to overthrow Castro had already been started.

In April, Cubans trained by the US and using US equipment landed at several sites on the main island. But Castro’s defence forces were stronger and easily outnumbered the invaders: in days they were defeated and captured.

The decision to invade had been made by the president’s most senior and talented advisors. Yet, the unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government in Cuba resulted in embarrassment and severely damaged its reputation as a superpower.

Were there occurrences in business?

There have been several failures in apparently invulnerable businesses where groupthink has been identified as a contributing cause.

At Swissair in the early 2000s, the airline exhibited an air of invulnerability due to its international success and reputation. Its homogenous boardroom led a strategy consisting mostly of poor acquisitions, instead of facing up to the reality of competition from new low-cost carriers. The result was a catastrophic loss in enterprise value.

At Volkswagen, pressure put on middle managers led to groupthink and unrealistic expectations on Volkswagen engineers. It resulted in fiddled emissions testing and pollutants being released at several times the legal limits.

And, a number of inquiries and reports into the Irish banking crisis of 2008/09 referred to a lack of challenging discourse and analysis within banks, with apparent fear of sanctions amongst contrarians. The presence of a “strong personality” acting as Chairman or CEO of the bank was sometimes also seen as contributing to this.[ii]

Signs of groupthink in organisations

In his article, Janis identified eight signs or symptoms of groupthink which can lead to flawed decision-making.

These traits include illusions of invulnerability, leading decision-makers to embark on unjustified risky behaviour, usually with an overly optimistic view of success. Another trait is where individuals share an illusion of unanimity in the group – and this suppresses any inclination to raise personal reservations. And then there is the pressure that may be applied by the group on any individual who raises doubts or asks inconvenient questions. This person may be represented as being disloyal.

Collectively, these traits can cause decision-making in groups to be excessively optimistic about success, ignoring any possible negative outcomes. Nothing the group decides to do can go wrong, regardless of the facts.

How to avoid groupthink

Groupthink arises above all when participants - striving for harmony - do not seek out alternatives with the seriousness they deserve, or they do not seek them at all.

Once the traits of possible groupthink are evident in a team, remedial strategies will be necessary. Here are some of the more common:

• Diversity, which is becoming increasingly obvious. Homogeneous groups whose members think very similarly are more prone to groupthink. On the contrary, diverse teams can be more successful because they sharpen focus and challenge entrenched thinking patterns. Diverse company boards will therefore perform better because they bring together different skills, viewpoints, and backgrounds, which will lead to higher-quality decisions.
• Involve external experts. Seeking outside opinions can prevent groupthink by introducing alternate perspectives and critical voices that question the status quo and challenge the conformity inside the group.
• Leaders, stand back! Groupthink often arises from a misguided sense of duty to a chief. Leaders should keep their opinions to themselves for as long as possible in order to uncover the real views of their teams.
• Appoint a devil’s advocate. Here, the purpose is to break the group unanimity and push members to reevaluate their stance, leading to more robust and informed conclusions.

Bay of Pigs epilogue

After the fiasco, Kennedy redesigned his decision-making process. He asked attendees to focus on problems as a whole, and not just from a departmental point of view. He insisted on more free-wheeling discussions in informal settings. Teams should work in sub-groups to develop and present alternatives. And they should sometimes meet without Kennedy present, so as to avoid people simply following his views.[iii]

By the time of the Cuban missiles crisis the following year, the changes he had made contributed to the better outcomes on that occasion. Not least because his team explored and developed different options, arguing more than one case, before presenting them back to JFK. Candid debate had entered the boardroom.

Lastly

“Stupid?” JFK had asked. But of course these men weren’t stupid. Yet they had succumbed to groupthink in the manner that Janis theorised: the desire for consensus outweighed a critical consideration of facts and ignored alternative approaches.

Kennedy learned lessons and changed the way his team reached decisions. But although his administration left groupthink behind, it can still be a cause of failure in companies today. Understanding this phenomenon is critical, as is recognising the signs and taking remedial action. What happened at the Bay of Pigs needs to be remembered in the boardroom.

This and other Comprend Insights articles are available and also downloadable here: https://www.comprend.ie/category/insights/

[i] Janis, I. L. (1971), Groupthink, Psychology Today.

[ii] For example, The Nyberg report (2011): Misjudging risk: causes of the systemic banking crisis in Ireland.

[iii] Harvard Business Review (Nov 2013), How John F. Kennedy Changed Decision Making for Us All.