Also see Scroll Strategic Plan Proposal for additional context
I’d like to start our discussion related to the Cognitive processes.
| Process | Description |
|---|---|
| 1. Sense | Sensemaking part of cognitive process. |
| 2. Remember | Also part of sensemaking? |
| 3. Create | Developing options, getting ideas - Harmonica |
| 4. Decide | Ranking the options / ideas - Simscore. After SimScore: Deliberation and Final Decision? |
| 5. Act | Proposal or Project Management |
| 6. Learn | Retrospective? Is this part of Sensemaking? |
An interesting dilemma is the tension between Wisdom of Crowds Tech (Independent judgement + Aggregation) and legacy deliberation tech methods (meetings, off-sites, discussion forums, sortition, debate, facilitation). In addition, most people intuitively believe in legacy deliberation.
I feel the reason is that legacy deliberation works well for small groups. For a small company of 6-8 people it’s easy to sit around the lunch table and work things out. Even with the group dynamics, the decisions will usually feel ok to most. But believe me, at 25 people this method completely fall apart. Most orgs solve that with hierarchy.
My core belief is that for large teams making big decisions, legacy deliberation tech is almost certainly negatively affected by group dynamics (who first, triggered, power, avoid confrontation). This will lead to decisions that are littered with groupthink, anchoring and social influence.
Wisdom of Crowds Tech
Diverse Independent Judgement (Harmonica)
Aggregation (SimScore)
This process handles 1-3 and half of 4.
Delphi Consensus Method
Cycle 1 Wisdom of Crowds Tech (Estimate)
Debate
Cycle 2 Wisdom of Crowds Tech (Estimate again)
This process will converge. However debate has potential negative group dynamics. Handles 1-4,
Centola Method
Cycle 1 Wisdom of Crowds Tech
Cycle 2 Wisdom of Crowds Tech
Cycle 3 Wisdom of Crowds Tech
Centola has strong evidence that crowd will learn and converge without debate. Handles 1-4