Murdoch, the GOP and Why NOT To Follow The Herd

One of my favorite cartoons first appeared in the New Yorker back
in 2003. It depicted two sheep staring at each other, one talking.
“Sure, I follow the herd–not out of brainless obedience, mind you, but
out of a deep and abiding respect for the concept of community.”

Although we think of ourselves as a nation of individuals, able to
make many, even most of our own decisions, the truth of the matter is
often very different. And it can be very dangerous.

One of the refrains that my daughters occasionally brought home in
their early years was, “But Dad, everybody’s doing it.” Children,
however, are not the only ones who pattern their behavior after others.
Indeed, Bob Cialdini, the social psychologist, has shown decisively that
much of adult behavior is based on what he terms social proof.
The tendency to see an act as more appropriate when others are doing it
can work quite well. We make fewer mistakes by acting like the group.
It’s a shortcut for deciding what to do. But at the same time it also
makes us vulnerable to the attacks of profiteers and extremists of all
sort who lie in wait.

One of my early frustrations in team development was the difficulty
of getting people to speak up and present their own perspective, not
just following the herd. It’s no surprise that plenty of people won’t
pull their own weight in a team setting. They’re social loafers. The
other characteristic that initially drove me nuts was that plenty of
team members would agree to things that they would never do alone. Being
in a team seemed to cause people to become less aware of themselves and
also less concerned with how others will evaluate them.

All of this pointed to some disastrous effects, effects that are
especially dangerous. Since it’s true that people can get lost in groups
and do things they would never do by themselves, the same is true in
making decisions.

To illustrate, think about the following example. Imagine that you’re
the parent of a daughter with a terrible heart condition that limits
her activities. Your doctor, however tells you about some new surgery
that just might make her completely healthy. The catch is that there is a
1% chance that the child will die from the surgery. What will you do?
Suppose the odds are different. Instead of a 1% chance, there’s a 50%
chance your child would die? Or worse yet, what if the chances of death
were 80 or 90%?

There’s a long history of research on these risk issues. What the
research shows is that individuals consistently make riskier decisions
when they’re in a group than when they’re alone. The second, even more
intriguing consequence, is that as the options become more clear, the
group becomes polarized. If you are predisposed to making slightly
riskier decisions, being in a group will cause you to make still more
risky decisions. And if you are predisposed to a less risky decision
making approach, you will become even less risky in your decision
making.

As you can expect, as decisions become more extreme, whether risky or
not, they also become far, far less accurate. And because everyone in
the group tends to do this, groups become polarized. I’m certain that
you can think of many business decisions by executive teams in which
this effect took place, resulting in disaster for the business. More
than twenty years ago, 3M found itself in the place in which it needed
to rework their finances with some cutting. The executive team decided
that they would simply offer early retirement to a large number of staff
on a first-come, first-serve basis. The tendency to conform and
go-along took hold. It was an extreme group decision, a piece of
group-think that failed utterly because it failed to consider the
consequences. Because the offer was made to all, many of their best
research scientists took it. One of my clients told me that it took
years to recoup from that disaster.

Watching the Murdoch, News of the World hacking reports has been
especially revealing. It’s pretty clear that there was an easy group
consensus of the reporters regarding their free-wheeling, a decision
that has gotten the entire group into serious, probably criminal
difficulties. As their competitive approach to news gathering took hold,
they became more extreme in their actions, and it has resulted in
disaster for Murdoch and his ilk.

The same kind of thoughtless extremism is also liable to put our
nation in serious difficulty. We have group members urged to sign all
kinds of pledges: Pledges to appoint anti-abortion cabinet officers, to
cut off funding of Planned Parenthood, and the “particularly bizarre
Marriage Vow in which candidates agree to oppose same-sex marriage.”

It strikes me,however, that the most bizarre, thoughtless pledge is
that of Grover Norquist’s anti-tax. Bill Clinton’s comment was apropos,
when he said that Norquist is the unofficial enforcer of pledging that
has a “chilling” hold on the nation’s lawmaking. Norquist was “quoted in
the paper the other day saying he gave Republican senators
PERMISSION–on getting rid of the ethanol subsidies. I thought, ‘My
God,what has this country come to when one person has to give you
permission to do what’s best for the country.’ It was chilling.”

But the analysis of David Brooks, the articulate Republican, writing
in his NYTimes column, served up an even stronger message. Commenting on
the failure of astute Republicans to take advantage of the recent offer
of the President regarding entitlements, Brooks writes,

American conservatism now has a rich
network of Washington interest groups adept at arousing elderly donors
and attracting rich lobbying contracts. For example, Grover Norquist of
Americans for Tax Reform has been instrumental in every recent G.O.P.
setback. He was a Newt Gingrich strategist in the 1990s, a major Jack
Abramoff companion in the 2000s and he enforced the no-compromise
orthodoxy that binds the party today.

Norquist is the Zelig of Republican
catastrophe. His method is always the same. He enforces rigid ultimatums
that make governance, or even thinking, impossible.

The only possible conclusion? Republicans have signed away the right to govern.

It’s refreshing to note that one candidate, Jon Huntsman, Jr., has
refused to conform to group-think and the extremism of his own party. He
owes allegiance, he says to his flag and his wife, nothing more.

The moral? Be very careful in following the decisions of the herd.
Like Thelma and Louise, their actions can spiral out of control driving
you right over the cliff.

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