I try to go on ski trips with about three other people. Too many more always seems to lessen the overall experience in some way. Often you find yourself waiting when youd rather be skiing. Sometimes you find yourself skiing terrain that is overly easy and boring, or out of your league and terrifying. The conversations of large groups on the mountain are predictable:

Roy: That was fun. What shall we do next?
Audrea: I dunno. What do you want to do?
Mike: Lets do that again!
Bonnie: Im cold!
Terry: When do we eat?
Richard: Dude, there is some untracked powder in that back bowl we should go to!
Sue: Im not sure I can ski that run, you guys go on.
Scott: Sure you can. Lets stay together.
Roy: Lets keep skiing and let the lunch crowd die down before going in.
Curt: I kind of liked that last run.
Mike: Lets do it again!
Bonnie: Lets do something, Im freezing standing here.
Roy: So same lift, same run everyone?
Richard: Whatever.
Terry: Is there a restaurant at the top of this lift?

Of course, when everyone unloads at the top the whole conversation is repeated, much to everyones frustration. It is common to hear the complaint, why did we do that? and nobody seems to remember why. This is a great example of Group-Think when a group of people have a conversation that is relatively ineffective, leads to bad decisions, frustrates all parties, and lacks cohesion and logic. The bad news is it happens all the time!

So now the Web 2.0 generation of technology is ushering in a new collaboration capability. We have blogs, instant messaging, social networks, collaboration hubs, Wikis, text messaging, and more, all allowing us to connect with one another in more ways. When we use this technology, there is a tendency to call it collaboration not matter what the outcome. But not all usage of this stuff is true collaboration; unfortunately much of it is still Group-Think.

I want to distinguish mass collaboration from group collaboration because the Group-Think phenomenon seems to me to occur less with mass collaboration than with a group of people that are less in size and know each other. Ill come back to this point later as too why I think that is.

Why for a small group (like a project team) does Group-Think sometimes take over? The main reason may be that small groups break the all participants are equal principle of collaboration. In the ski example above, people are perceived differently based on their skiing ability, age, wealth, experience with the resort, personality, or any number of things. It is not uncommon for everyone to assume that the best skier should somehow know what everyone wants to do and make the right decisions even though that thinking lacks any logical basis. In a company, job title, experience, or position in the organizational hierarchy sets people apart in perceived equality. This perception in itself is not enough to destroy collaboration from happening unless it is aided by behaviors that reinforce the inequality of the participants, which it frequently is. The most common such behavior is when the more senior person tries to act more senior at a time when good collaboration is occurring.

Picture this: Someone comes up with a pretty clever idea. A couple others like where the idea is going and add more meat to it. The idea is taking shape when its discovered that one other guy doesnt like it, mostly because it means he will have to learn a new way to do something, albeit a minor new way. His boss joins in the conversation in his defense using an aggressive tone calling the idea premature or a nirvana pursuit and people who are thinking about it as obsessive. Usually, the idea dies at this point and Group-Think takes over. If there is any discussion on it at all, it is based on carefully chosen words that keeps the ambiguity at the level to cloud any potential disagreements. But for the most part, the collaboration is dead and calls by the more senior person to reinstate it are likely to be disappointing. A message was sent and received we are not equal!

Contrast this to mass collaboration, where hundreds, thousands, or many times more people are potentially active in a discussion. In this world, no one is all that impressed with another persons title or pay grade. In fact, this reality is one of the joys of Web 2.0 collaboration your perspective counts! Only in this world could an average person offer up a criticism to Albert Einstein. Dont believe me? Just go look at the blog of your favorite subject matter expert. If the blog is good, it is filled with contrary points-of-view (click here to see a great example from Nicholas Carrs blog). Mass collaboration doesnt let one persons opinion slow a good idea just because that person uses aggressive language. Instead, the wisdom of crowds takes over as the passion for the idea determines the ideas fate, not some internal political objective.

Group-Think can take over promising collaborations, more-so in small groups. But senior people can help curtail this by modifying their own behaviors.

• First, act like an equal, not a superior. It may still be your job to make timely decisions, but make them on the basis of having heard and acknowledging all points-of-view.
• Second, open up your intellectual integrity your willingness to explore the value of thinking that is not necessarily of your own making.
• Third, follow the passion. When people get passionate on an idea, there is likely something behind it. Not always, but the more people and the more passion, the more you want to add fertilizer, not weed killer.