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- Read the attached article titled as “Process That Prevents Groupthink” by Art Markman, published in Harvard Business Review, and answer the following Questions: [3 Marks]
- Summarize the article and explain the main issues discussed in the article. (In 400-600 words)
According to Markman 2015, in his publication, “The Problem Solving Process That Prevents Groupthink” has espoused a number of thoughts which are critical both to an individual person and to an organization and organizational leadership. The main point of the author is creative problem solving. How people and or groups can offer credible solutions to imminent problem they face or tasked of them. According to Art Markman, he postulates in his publications two schools of thought. First, he advances that the main reason as to why most people are not good creative problem solvers is because they do not have initial training on educational creativity. He states that the inability of the education system to impact creativity in its syllabus or the inability of students during training to be creative is a hurdle in creative problem solving. The second school of thought he hypothesizes is that a number of people, while working in a group environment, are not able to clearly focus and earnest the potentiality of the group and its members to creatively solve a problem.
The author thus proposes action plans for the two aforementioned thoughts. In the first instance where people lack basic training, he proposes that the management to organize such that people are able to be educated and learn more regarding their ways of thinking. On the second issues, he state that it is within the individual person`s ability to change. It is imperative to mention that Art state that in creative problem solving, individuals need to be smart and think outside the box even when at group level. He contends that traditional group brainstorming as suggested by Alex Osborn no longer works best. He reports that when people work in a group and start the process of floating ideas in the air, few solutions will be reaches to solve a problem as opposed to when a person works a lone. Therefore, he introduces the convergent and divergent concepts of creative problem solving methods.
The two concepts work under the principle of group problem solving which state hat group members who are dedicated to working on a problem converge while people working independently diverge. As such, he says that when people are working within a group, they should be able to work at personal level in floating ideas to solve a problem to create divergence. For instance, when it is asked the alternative solutions of a problem, everybody would come up with their different solutions. Those solutions would be then considered by all the group members and narrow down to best actionable plans after everybody has exhausted their ideas. The process of all the group members resolving to settle on suitable candidates for solutions bring the second aspect of convergence. Convergence is thus the ability of the group members to come together to think about ideas which were floated by individual group members and how they solve the problem.
Therefore, Art proposes that from the onset of group creative problem solving, people should go independent routes to examine the root cause of a problem and state the problem statement which is divergence. Get the members back together, and they would agree on one problem statement which is convergence. Again, they should be allowed to work on individual solutions and bring each case to the group before the group can settle on best practices to solve the problem.
- Why groups working together diverge less than individuals working alone
In the publication by Art, it is clear that people working in a group diverge more than when individuals are working alone. A number of reasons have been floated by the author, but a striking point is that when in group level, people are able to brainstorm loudly and share their ideas. Once a person have stated their main point, this idea would be able to limit the thinking of other group members and all reasoning would be based around the idea of one person. The point is, once a person have floated their idea in the open, other people would have their creativity curtailed and would be corrupted by the already said idea that everybody agrees with, or disagree with. As such, the main reason why working at individual levels makes people divergent is because they have the free space and time to independently provoke though and exhaust all possible options. Additionally, people working in groups don’t diverge as much as when working individually due to fear of their opinion being rejected, contradicted or not picked as the best possible solution.
Question Two.
- You have to identify the decision, constants, and output variables in the spreadsheet based on the information given in figure? Indicate how much money Florina can make per month from the sales of shoes?
The decision variable is the type and quantity of shoes to be produced. The constraint is the unit to sell per month as dictated by price. The output variable is the subtotal
- Give your views on which type of shoe they should promote the most aggressively to increase the revenue of the company on the basis of information given in figure?
The sale of leather 1200 leather shoes will produce 240000, when each pair is sold at 200. This type has a low price per unit and lower number of units to be sold and therefore may not better Sports shoes. Sports shoes generate the highest revenue of 630000 when 1800 units are sold at a price of 350 per unit. This seems to be giving attractive yields. Personalized sports shoes are selling at a price of 400 but the unit to sell is the least. It seems they do not attract a high market and therefore they are not the most recommended. Therefore, I would recommend maximizing on sports shoes as they have the highest output and also a moderately good price per unit.
| A | B | C | D | |
| 1 | Florina | |||
| 2 | Shoe Type | Price
(in SAR) |
Unit to Sell | Subtotal
(in SAR) |
| 3 | Leather Shoes | 200 | 1200 | 240000 |
| 4 | Sports Shoes | 350 | 1800 | 630000 |
| 5 | Personalized Sports shoes | 400 | 800 | 320000 |
| 6 | Total Revenue | 1190000 | ||
References
Rickards, T. and Moger, S., 2017. Handbook for creative team leaders. Routledge.
Markman A. (November 25, 2015). Process That Prevents Groupthink. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-problem-solving-process-that-prevents-groupthink
