Group-think: what it is and how to avoid it

By Colin Fisher, Associate Professor of Organisations and Innovation, UCL

Former government adviser Dominic Cummings has made waves by suggesting the UK government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis was “a classic historic example of group-think”.

He said the more people criticised the government’s plan, the more those on the inside said others did not understand. He added that, had the plans been open to scrutiny earlier, “we would have figured out at least six weeks earlier that there was an alternative plan”.

Although we can’t know for sure the truth of this criticism, it raises an important question about the dynamics of decision-making in…

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