Creating Great Choices

by Jennifer Riel

  But not so fast. Just before that declaration, Andrew Wakefield had published an article in the Lancet linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism.2 Although the article later was thoroughly discredited and Wakefield barred from practicing medicine, it was enough to boost a nascent antivaccine movement. In the years since, the “antivax” movement has grown dramatically, with advocates such as Robert Kennedy Jr. and Jenny McCarthy publicly questioning the safety of vaccines in general and the MMR vaccine in particular.

  The resulting effect—parents failing to have their children vaccinated—although small in absolute numbers, is worrisome. The United States as a whole maintains vaccination rates for MMR at more than 90 percent, but in seventeen states MMR vaccinations dip below the 90 percent hurdle rate required to achieve herd immunity (the rate at which enough people are vaccinated to protect the entire community from potential outbreaks, including among those too young or too ill to be vaccinated).3 Interestingly, low vaccination rates occur broadly, including in places of privilege; only 84 percent of students entering kindergarten in wealthy Marin County, California, are fully vaccinated.4 The oil-rich province of Alberta, Canada, has a measles immunization rate of slightly less than 86 percent.5 Both regions have seen measles outbreaks in recent years. In the face of the antivax movement, measles is making a comeback.

  All of this context convinced Jennifer that the issue would make for an interesting exploration of opposing ideas, so she blithely announced to a roomful of health-care practitioners that their topic for the afternoon would the vaccine debate. There was a pause, and then a booming voice from the back of the room: “Excuse me, but there is no debate about vaccines!” Heads nodded, and voices murmured general agreement.

  But then one participant bravely piped up: “Isn’t there, though? We act as if there is no debate, and, medically, that’s true. So then why are fewer people vaccinating their kids? Maybe we need to acknowledge that there really is a debate. And we are losing it.” For two decades, the medical community has presented fact after scientific fact in support of vaccines. It has, for all intents and purposes, demonized people who do not vaccinate their children. Yet the antivax movement has dug in its heels—and has even grown—in response. Perhaps, the class finally agreed, it might be time for a different approach. To influence those who oppose vaccinations, they determined, the medical community might need to truly understand the antivax model of the world.

  Understanding opposing models—even, or perhaps especially, those that make us deeply uncomfortable—is what the first stage of the integrative thinking process is all about. It begins with defining the problem, then identifying two opposing models that could solve that problem, and, finally, exploring how each of these opposing models works, with the aim of getting to an articulation of the core value that each model might provide. The intention is not to help you choose between these opposing models, but to help you use the opposing models to create a great, new choice.

  This first stage can be tough, as the vaccine example illustrates. The problem with opposing models is that sometimes only one of the models feels like the right answer. Vaccines, to these health-care folks, are the right answer. Parents who advocate for the right to choose whether or not their child should be vaccinated (or to what extent or on what schedule) are treated as antiscientific, irresponsible, illogical, and even immoral. Given what you’ve learned about cognitive biases, it should come as no surprise that those in the antivax movement reject this assessment and refuse to listen to those who have characterized them in these ways.

  Recall the study cited earlier that demonstrated the effect of introducing contradictory evidence to people with strongly held views: the contradictory evidence actually produces entrenchment in the original belief, rather than changed minds. Throwing science at parents worried about vaccines has had just that effect. That the medical establishment continues to do so—repeatedly, in the same ways—is a failure of empathy. As many of us might in a similar situation, they continue to enforce on other people their own views of what is valid evidence, and their own models, without considering what those other people believe and why they believe it. Such an approach is unlikely to produce outcomes that are different from the ones they are producing now.

  GET BEYOND STUPID OR EVIL

  Blindly berating those who hold opposing models happens in other contexts as well, such as politics and economics. In politics, conservatives tend to see liberals as hopelessly naive, building unaffordable entitlement schemes the country can ill afford. And liberals typically see conservatives as unfeeling and unkind, more interested in money than in people. These characterizations are not a million miles from stupid (liberals) and evil (conservatives).

  Jonathan Haidt has captured a similar tension in his work on capitalism. He argues that a pitched battle is playing out between two opposing narratives in economics: one side of the spectrum sees capitalism as exploitation; the other sees it as liberation.6 One side says we need a strong hand to prevent the worst effects of free markets; the other says we will be better off if we let the markets run as they will. Haidt argues that we need a new narrative to replace these dueling ones. Because, without the creation of an integrated, alternative narrative, what is the natural result of the fundamental tensions embedded in the existing narratives? Political gridlock, an increasing gulf between the left and the right, and the end of meaningful dialogue across the political spectrum. We wind up talking only to those who already agree with us and disconnecting from the other side. It’s simple pragmatism. Why bother listening to someone who is wrong? What is to be gained?

  As it turns out, we stand to gain a great deal. Listening only to those who agree with us reinforces our existing views, blinds us to the flaws in our reasoning, and limits the creativity of our thinking. And it can have real-world negative effects on individual and organizational performance. In one study, researchers found that CEOs overrely on advice from executives who share a common functional background, friendship ties, or employment in the same industry, especially when a company is performing poorly. The more such leaders seek advice from those like them, the less likely these leaders are to change the firm’s strategy, despite its poor performance. “It appears,” the authors wrote, “that poorly performing firms are ultimately less likely to improve and more likely to get worse as a result of CEOs’ seeking advice from executives at other firms.”7

  It’s no surprise. Friends and peers from similar backgrounds tend to agree with us. It is a manifestation of groupthink, in which a group reaches a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints, often having actively suppressed dissenting viewpoints. Studies indicate that groupthink happens most often when a group is homogenous and insulated from outside perspectives. Consider those conditions, and then think about most corporate boardrooms and senior leadership teams; how much diversity of context, experience, and perspective do they contain? And how much of their discussion processes are aimed at surfacing disagreement? Virtually none at all. In most boardrooms, in our experience, the drive for consensus means the board quickly converges around the majority opinion. A cynic might say that very little thinking happens in those rooms.

  By contrast, as Charlan Nemeth has noted, exposure to minority views makes us think harder. “Those exposed to minority views are stimulated to attend to more aspects of the situation, they think in more divergent ways and they are more likely to detect novel solutions or come to new decisions,” she wrote.8 This is true even when, as in the case of vaccines, the minority view is “invalid” by most standards. As Adam Grant puts it in his book Originals, “Dissenting opinions are useful, even when they are wrong.”9

  Going back to our health-care practitioners, Jennifer asked the group to carefully consider opposing models for the administration of vaccines. On one hand was a model in which vaccines are mandated entirely by the government (Canada is a publicly funded health-care system, so such an approach is not far from the curre
nt model in use). In this model, decision makers within the public system would mandate a series and schedule of vaccines for all children, and parents would have no choice but to comply (for instance, unvaccinated kids would not be allowed to attend public schools and parents could be subject to an array of punishments). On the other hand was a model in which no vaccines were mandated and all choices about vaccines were made by the parents.

  This second model made the health-care workers extraordinarily uncomfortable. But, after struggling with it for a while, they came to see some important potential benefits from the parent-choice model. (For example, the parent-choice model recognizes that the parent is ultimately most responsible and accountable for a child’s well-being. Under such a model, health-care workers would be pushed to do a better job of engaging with skeptical parents and finding new modes of influence when a mandate was no longer on the table.) At the end of the discussion the group agreed that, at the very least, a deeper understanding of the parent-choice model could help shift the way we talk about vaccines to the public at large and help reverse the antivax trend.

  Try This

  Who are the people in your organization who think very differently from the way you think? Who are those folks who tend to hold models that sit in opposition to your own? Who are the helpful but slightly naive outsiders who see the world from a vantage point quite distinct from your own? The next time you are struggling with a decision, ask one of those people to think it through with you. Ask, “What do you see that I don’t see?” Or invite that person into the problem-solving process along with your team. We tend to privilege expertise and value the insider’s perspective. But this approach can be limiting if we seek only that perspective. Outsiders can often highlight embedded assumptions and mental models that the experts in the group cannot see.

  To surface and explore dissenting opinions, we need ground rules that enable everyone in a group to discuss the problem, regardless of their own perspectives on the existing models. Simply telling people to have a productive dialogue on an issue isn’t enough. Without real tools, this admonition falls into the category of unactionable advice, like “Grow taller.” We would if we could! This is where the integrative thinking process comes in.

  Here, at the outset of the process, you are setting yourself up to think differently about a problem you face. In this phase, you take the following steps.

  Define the problem.

  Identify two extreme and opposing answers to the problem.

  Sketch out the two opposing ideas.

  Lay out how each model works.

  Each step is critical to the social process of problem solving and to leveraging diverse perspectives to create superior answers. It all begins with defining the problem.

  DEFINE THE PROBLEM

  Writing about a theory of inquiry in 1938, John Dewey noted that “it is a familiar and significant saying that a problem well put is half-solved . . . Without a problem, there is blind groping in the dark.”10 We agree. Without at least a provisional agreement as to the problem to be solved, groups tend to argue rather than make progress. They tend to obsess about symptoms and inputs, complain that the world is too complex, and then break the problem into small, manageable pieces. As A.G. Lafley likes to say, they fail to come to grips with reality.

  In integrative thinking, we start by seeking a simple articulation, or framing, of a problem that is worth solving. A problem worth solving is one that matters. It is one that is meaningful to the individuals tasked with solving it. And it needn’t be a problem with world-shaking implications or one that’s faced only by Fortune 500 CEOs.

  Here’s one example of problem framing from a group of students consulting to the manager of a community garden. The manager had noticed that some of the food was being picked improperly. This wasn’t a terribly big deal, but it bothered him because it suggested that community members were coming to the garden after hours and helping themselves to the produce. If true, this raised the tricky issue of how best to respond. Were he to crack down on access, he would reduce the community’s sense of ownership and responsibility for the garden. But if he did nothing, he would be rewarding freeloaders at the expense of those who dedicated their time and energy to the garden. Left unchecked, the current situation could lead to distrust and dysfunction, ultimately shutting down the whole project. So how should the manager think about ownership of, and access to, the garden, in order to increase the chances of long-term success for the project? This problem, for the students and the manager, was one worth solving.

  Framing the problem is a matter of creating a short statement that captures the essence of the problem to be solved. Don’t obsess about finding the perfect words; you can refine the problem statement later if you feel the need. At this point, focus instead on ensuring that your team has a shared understanding of the provisional problem and a shared commitment to solving it. So don’t wordsmith, but do consider using a brilliantly helpful phase from design thinking: try beginning your problem statement with the words, “How might we . . .” Min Basadur, who helped popularize the phrase, says, “People may start out asking, ‘How can we do this,’ or ‘How should we do that?’. . . But as soon as you start using words like can and should, you’re implying judgment: ‘Can we really do it? And should we?’” By using the word might, instead of can or should, he says, “you’re able to defer judgment, which helps people to create options more freely, and opens up more possibilities.”11

  Your problem, then, should be framed in a way that helps people imagine that an answer might be possible. How might we, for instance, create a model for governance of a community garden that could ensure the garden’s longevity? With such a question in mind, you can move on to engage with opposing models.

  Try This

  What are the dilemmas that you face in your organization, in your job, and in your life? For which trade-offs do you often wish there was a better answer? Make a list of your problems worth solving.

  IDENTIFY TWO EXTREME AND OPPOSING MODELS

  When we first started teaching integrative thinking, we framed it as a tool to be used in those moments when you face a difficult trade-off: a clear but unappealing either-or choice. We presented it in this way because when we had asked highly successful leaders to share their most difficult choices, they almost always did so by articulating an untenable either-or dilemma: When he became CEO, A.G. Lafley could either fix P&G’s financials in the short run or invest in innovation to win in the long run. When launching the Four Seasons, Isadore Sharp could either build small, friendly, but economically tenuous motels, or he could build large, luxurious convention hotels that would be financially sustainable but cold and impersonal for guests. At Red Hat, Bob Young could embrace either the free software model or the proprietary model. Based on interviews, for years, we taught integrative thinking as a tool to be used when life hands you one of those tough either-or situations.

  But as we did so, we came to see that beginning with an abstract problem (How should I think about the right level of investment in innovation? What is the right business model for my hotels? What kind of a software company do I want to build?) and moving to a clear choice between two opposing choices is a powerful way to progress toward a solution, whether or not the final choice is clear from the outset. This insight led us to wonder, What if the world didn’t hand either-or choices to our integrative thinkers? What if the world instead gave them a wicked problem and they instinctively converted the problem into an either-or choice as a way to help them think about the problem more effectively? If this were the case, perhaps we could help those learning to solve tough problems to do the same thing.

  What might this look like? Consider a sales director we met in an executive MBA class. She was working for a wire-mesh distributor. The organization had recently acquired a competitor and was struggling with the integration of the two firms. One particularly knotty issue was the question of how to structure the sales force. One of the companies had a large direct
sales force, whereas the other had traditionally relied on wholesale dealers to sell to the end user. With the merger, the sales teams had to be integrated, but what was the best way to do that? The debate had raged for months, with little progress toward an answer. The sales director feared that the organization would spend even more time talking about the problem, studying best practices, surveying stakeholders, and crunching the numbers, and yet wind up no more certain of the best way to move ahead. To avoid that, she asked her team to move from a general consideration of the problem (we need to integrate these two sales forces) to a defined articulation of two opposing models that might solve the problem (we need to either go direct or go through dealers). As they proceeded, we encouraged the team members to focus on the two most extreme versions of the sales models: an entirely direct-sales model and a dealer-only model. The problem as it was provisionally framed, then, was this: How might we create an integrated sales model that captures the best parts of the all-direct-sales and dealer-only models? With the problem framed in this way, the team was able to analyze its choices productively and soon came to an answer in which a small, focused direct sales force would treat the dealers as its customers, upskilling and supporting this much broader dealer network, which would then be far better equipped to serve the end customers.

  Why begin with two extreme and opposing models? We start with two models primarily because it is a lot better than one model. Translating a problem into a two-sided choice raises the emotional temperature and provides momentum to the group process. Factions on both sides start to grapple with the implications of the choice. You want, as Alfred Sloan did, to use disagreement to help you understand the real issue and the potential solutions. Exploring more than one model also provides a fail-safe defense against confirmation bias, groupthink, and a too-early commitment to any single answer.