Vennix (1999)
Research over the last four decades has convincingly demonstrated that our
information processing capacity is limited and that humans employ biases and
heuristics in order to reduce mental effort. Application of biases and heuristics is
not limited to individuals. Groups display the same biases and will thus not make
better decisions than individuals.
There is another, sometimes underestimated, aspect in which system dynamics
can increase a group's information processing capacity. That is through mapping
or qualitative modelling. Qualitative modelling has been widely discussed in the
system dynamics literature and is a continuing source of controversy.
Psychologists have, for example, found that differential previous information may
lead to quite different interpretations of similar situations. People can easily be
led to believe things and, even when told in retrospect that they participated in
an experiment, this may have no marked influence on these beliefs. To
complicate the matter further, humans are social beings and their interpretations
are thus influenced by what others think.
Finally, to complete the picture, human memory is also often distorted, a
phenomenon known as hindsight bias. Memory is not a device that stores and
retrieves information; rather it continuously reconstructs the past in order to fit it
in with current beliefs and opinions. Worse still, it has been demonstrated that
memories can be deliberately created of events that actually never occurred.
Summarising, we may conclude that the way humans perceive situations and
construct their models of reality is a complex phenomenon. We observe that
interpretations, perceptions and memory may be distorted as a result of a
number of factors. Second, people's mental models are frequently only partial
representations of a complex situation. Managers tend to see parts rather than
wholes, particularly when they are not trained in systems thinking.
Group sources of messy problems relate to deficiencies in group interaction and
to the self-fulfilling nature of reality construction in groups.
Groups can show a variety of deficiencies. Frequently encountered is the mixing
up of cognitive tasks, in particular the production and evaluation of information.
This is partly caused by our strong tendency to evaluate what is said, which
inhibits our potential to listen carefully. Another problem in groups is the lack of
critical investigation, or, in extreme cases, the deliberate suppression of it,
leading to groupthink situations.
However, in messy managerial situations the biggest problem is the way team
members communicate. Apart from our inclination to evaluate and our inability
to listen, a third inhibiting factor to effective communication is defensiveness,
leading to low-quality communication, which in turn:
a. Increases decision time
b. Has a negative impact on decision quality
c. Inhibits creativity in groups
We have observed that there are several reasons why people interpret situations
differently.
A person's behaviour is to a large degree affected by expectations, which are in
turn based on a person's model of reality.
