Dear Colleagues,

I have been asked to facilitate a 4-hour course on decision making for company directors. I would be most grateful for any materials, ideas, and particularly experiential exercises that some of you may have found useful for this type of workshop.

I am very happy to collate ideas and forward them to those who are also interested in this area.

With many thanks in anticipation,

Kind regards

Dr Judith S. MacCormick

Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Organization and Management

Australian School of Business

University of NSW

Randwick, 2052

AUSTRALIA

Phone: 9960 4060

Mobile: 0419 285 255

Email: judithm@agsm.edu.au

Hello Judith,

I find the CRM Learning material on Group Think to be an interesting twenty minute video with appropriate footage for management students or participants in a seminar. It comes with suggestions for delivery formats coupled with group think group exercises. It is somewhat costly but I have it in the library on reserve so business professors could use it across campus. CRM provides a trailer that could be a lead in to a discussion with a HBS case study if you feel that the video is too costly for your training seminar.

Best wishes,

Michael Provitera, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Barry University, Miami, Florida

http://www.crmlearning.com/Groupthink-P54289.aspx

Groupthink

CRM Produced

Run time: 22 Minutes

Dr. Irving Janis introduced the concept of "groupthink" by asking and then answering these questions: How do groups really make decisions? What drives groups to agree despite the better judgement of some, or even all, participants? Why do group decisions sometimes result in monumental error? What are the signals to watch for?

Participants in Groupthink training gain an understanding of the eight symptoms and strategies for avoiding it. After seeing how the groupthink phenomenon may have caused the Challenger disaster, your organization's team consensus-building and process-implementation will be changed forever.

Also mentioned are other historical events - the Bay of Pigs invasion, Pearl Harbor and the Cuban Missile Crisis - to explore and help demonstrate the phenomenon of groupthink.

Hello Judith,

You might check Board Source (http://www.boardsource.org/ ) - they have a lot of publications in this area.  Good luck!

Best,

Margaret

________________________________________________

Margaret Andrews

Associate Dean for Management Programs

Harvard University

Division of Continuing Education

617.998.8550

Organizational Behavior Division Listserv <OB@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU> on October 7, 2010 at 7:57 AM -0400 wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

 

I have been asked to facilitate a 4-hour course on decision making for company directors. I would be most grateful for any materials, ideas, and particularly experiential exercises that some of you may have found useful for this type of workshop.

 

I am very happy to collate ideas and forward them to those who are also interested in this area.

 

With many thanks in anticipation,

 

Kind regards

 

Dr Judith S. MacCormick

Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Organization and Management

Australian School of Business

University of NSW

Randwick, 2052

AUSTRALIA

 

Phone: 9960 4060

Mobile: 0419 285 255

Email: judithm@agsm.edu.au