If you are always right, how can you know that you have found the best solution? - B9

For week 10 we had to read a long case study and come up with a few solutions for the class discussion. The emphasis was on collective thinking and understanding individual creativity. As the problem was affecting many different stakeholders, it was important to identify which stakeholders were stopping the progress and which could help overcome the problem. This kind of problem requires discussion and different thoughts. Therefore, instead of focusing on the case study itself, I will look into the importance of collectivism and how great ideas can be generated and utilised.

Every individual can be creative and creativity is mostly seen as a good trait, but having many creative minds in one room can cause problems. Why? How can creativity cause a problem? As creativity and ideas are only useful for the future and knowing that we know little or nothing about the future, it is clear that arguments can arise about which idea should be taken forward. Ideas are just thoughts and sometimes without putting them in place, we cannot see their full potential. Companies that are lucky enough to be able to test all good ideas usually have a quiet comfortable position in the market, but what should others do? Here is where failing comes into the equation.

Failure is good. It means that we have tried and hopefully learned something from it. It allows us to get a different view and understanding on things and prevents us from making a bigger mistake. The reason why multiple ideas are useful is because they let us review our decisions and evaluate what could have happened if we did something else. Also, choosing somebody else’s idea instead of your own makes your employees more confident and they feel like they matter and can if asked, make a change. Likewise, without bad ideas, it can be hard to identify some positive traits of other ideas. Altogether, people should realise that failing is not bad if it is not detrimental to you or to the company. It helps individuals grow and therefore collective discussion is crucial.

Moreover, big established companies encourage their employees to try, test and fail. They know that from their huge workforce eventually there will be someone with a brilliant idea that can truly take the company forward. Therefore, people relying solely on themselves mostly have only a short term success. They miss out seeing a big picture not because they are not good enough, but because it is not possible that they can think of everything. Therefore, meetings should involve as many people as possible and relaxed and encouraging atmosphere should be established. To finish up, this is how I see the problem of having only one or few views on the matter:

‘’If you are always right, how can you know that you have found the best solution?’’

#groupdiscussion #argument