On Mon, 21 Aug 1995 mbayers@mmm.com wrote:
SOME SNIPPING HERE
> It seems to me that a singular advantage of anonymity comes from the
> concept that the idea under examination will stand or fall on its own
> merits -- that is, its 'sponsor' cannot carry by dint of his/her clou>
> And somehow we seem to pre-suppose the principal that the good (or useful
> or whatever) ideas will rise to the top -- that is, that our organizations
> demonstrate political neutrality.
> --
> Michael Ayers
> mbayers@mmm.com
Here's a note about how things can rise toward the top without beating up
on anyone's ideas. This note is based on 20 years of experience in using
the widely-used Nominal Group Technique of Delbecq, Van de Ven et al.
(Note: We don't use the last--final selection--step, which is cognitively
unsound, but the first four steps are great!)
After the group generates and clarifies all of the ideas, each individual
is asked to select (anonymously, to avoid any pathologies external to the
individual) the five most important ideas. In the Interactive Management
process, we take all the ideas that get a vote from any individual as the
ones that remain for purposes of structuring. Those that get no votes
from anyone are normally not processed further. In this way, everyone's
main interests is preserved, while ideas that seemed to have lost any
support just disappear from the action,l without controversy.
Spreadthink is always present in the results, since no two people come
anywhere close to agreeing on anything. This is why the voting results
are not of much value, except to separate potential wheat from chaff
without generating any bad feelings.
-- JOHN WARFIELD Jwarfiel@gmu.edu