+
+ Besides the NASA Challenger explosion, the most notorious example of groupthink
+ was the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
+ In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy and his team of advisors thought
+ — for some reason —
+ it would be a good idea to secretly invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro.
+ They failed.
+ Actually, worse than failed: it led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962,
+
the closest the world had ever been to full-scale nuclear war.
+
+
+
+ Yup, JFK really screwed up on that one.
+
+
+
+ But, having learnt some hard lessons from the Bay of Pigs fiasco,
+ JFK re-organized his team to avoid groupthink.
+ Among many things, he:
+ 1) actively encouraged people to voice criticism,
+ thus lowering the "contagion threshold" for alternate ideas.
+ And
+ 2) he broke his team up into sub-groups before reconvening,
+ which gave their group a "small world network"-like design!
+ Together, this arrangement allowed for a healthy diversity of opinion,
+ but without being too fractured — a wisdom of crowds.
+
+
+
+ And so, with the same
individuals who decided the Bay of Pigs,
+ but re-arranged
collectively to decide on the Cuban Missile Crisis...
+ JFK's team was able to reach a peaceful agreement with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
+ The Soviets would remove their missiles from Cuba, and in return,
+ the US would promise not to invade Cuba again.
+ (and also agreed, in secret, to remove the US missiles from Turkey)
+
+
+
+ And that's the story of how all of humanity almost died.
+ But a small world network saved the day! Sort of.
+
+
+
+ You can read more about this
+
+ on Harvard Business Review,
+ or from
+
+ the original article on groupthink.
+
+
+
+