So we sort of talked about an optimistic scenario which everyone's dying to participate,
and we are like jumping in, right?
But you're blocking me because we have so much to say that we can't all speak at once,
but that doesn't always happen, right?
This is easy, keep going,
and I'll just stand here and smile. I love it.
Right. So psychologists call that free riding or social loafing, right?
I'll call it laziness.
Laziness? I love that, too.
But that often is a consequence of putting people into groups.
When you're in a group, you're like,
okay, there's five or six other people,
I know they can't really track every single idea I'm saying.
And so, I can just kind of hide out a little bit, right?
And it's like the old saying,
many hands make light work.
Right.
And so in groups, you feel lazy and that's actually a good thing, right?
You feel like I can rely on everyone else.
The problem is that you get fewer ideas out on the table,
so there's just less raw material to work with in terms of being creative.
So, we produce less,
because I feel like,
well, I did my share.
Right. And so, again,
there's this theme of creativity requires effort and really
thinking through problems and sharing perspectives and really,
it's not going to happen just by,
the group isn't just going to roll over the next idea, right?
And so, everyone has to participate,
but to the extent that they feel lazy,
it just doesn't happen, right?
Right. Well, and there's probably also a social comparison process, right?
So, I'm thinking, well,
I said two things,
that guy only said one.
Yes.
So I'm doing fine, right?
And actually, those kinds of comparisons make people happy.
At least, I'm not that loser.
So, I can relax. And so,
when everyone does that, it's like a downward spiral, right?
Right, lowest common denominator.
I mean, literally. I mean, that's the logic, right?
Is that we're all get a little lazier
and then we compare ourselves to the person who's sleeping.
At least, we're not sleeping.
Another gift from teams, right?
But there is actually an easy way around this.
I'm just going to say, what do we do?
Right. So, one of the easy ways is just,
often, you have a brainstorming sheet in which people are writing down ideas.
If you simply make each person in the group have their own column,
and every time somebody says an idea,
you write it in a different column,
it just sends a signal that, oh,
my output is being tracked and I don't want to be the person
with no ideas at the end of discussion even if no one notices.
And I've seen data where just that simple intervention
boosts the number of ideas generated by as much as 30 percent.
So, it's just a really simple logistical thing.
We're starting off easy. This is one of the simpler problems to solve.
Right, absolutely.
So but we can go beyond.
I mean, some of it is,
I talk and you're not talking, and this one is,
I don't worry about my output because
we're all sort of sharing and that guy over there sleeping, so I'm better than him.
Right.
But these logistics fixes are still things that we stumble over, right?
We don't solve these kinds of problems.
And then the next one I think is maybe something about timidity, right?
Like I don't speak up.
So, even if I have a list with names,
maybe I'm not comfortable sharing that.
So, I mean part of it is that people want their ideas to be liked,
you want people to say like, "I love that idea."
They're probably creative ideas,
sometimes sound weird, they're unusual,
they make you look quirky,
and sometimes they generate conflict.
Do I want to put that next to my name?
Exactly right. And so, it's awkward.
It can be awkward to share ideas and so we often find is
that rather than sharing their boldest ideas,
people share their safest ones so that people are more likely to say like,
"Yeah, that sounds reasonable and good.
You're okay, right?" And so,
rather than really taking risks and
sharing ideas that they think are really path breaking.
I don't want to look dumb,
I don't want to look stupid,
I don't want to look irrelevant,
I don't want to look crazy.
Yeah, and so, these again aren't issues when
you're working alone unless you're really neurotic.
I take that back.
But in groups, there really is this very real potential for people to say like,
"Your ideas are terrible."
Absolutely.
And people are terrified of that.
And so, again, teams make people timid.
You're putting yourself out there. So we block each other.
Yes, it's terrible, right?
We get lazy and we get timid.
Yes and these are things that we could fix.
We could intervene, but they're going to happen pretty
naturally unless you're deliberately intervening.
Right. In the case that timidity,
some groups you'll find actually explicitly rule out criticism.
And so, there are cases where like, if you criticize my idea,
someone rings a bell, that's not allowed.
That gets around it a little bit but as we'll see,
there are some more difficult problems to get around. These are the easy ones.
Yes.