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When to Use Creative Groups - Part 2

Not only have problems become increasingly complex, but we have, in recent years, tended to make our individual problem-solvers more specialized. This pertains to business executives as well as scientists. There are strong indications in business that, in breeding new specialist executives, we may have shortchanged ourselves on the "generalist" types so necessary to cope with broad, over-all business problems. As any individual becomes more specialized, his sphere of knowledge and capabilities drops off in the broader areas, and he finds himself in need of other specialists in order to survive. The more we specialize, the more dependent we become on one another—and the more we must cooperate with others. For a business or scientific specialist of any kind to declare himself independent of his fellow men today is literally to commit professional suicide.

The scientific or management "team" of two or three men has provided a partial answer to this. But even teams find their joint imaginative efforts inadequate at times. So more and more we are being forced to turn to group efforts to come up with ideas and answers, particularly when those ideas and answers are needed in a hurry.

It is unfortunate that the necessity of using groups has pushed many people into the practice before they have taken the time to seriously explore the use of groups or teams as problem-solving tools. In some fields, group use has become almost a fad: a meet­ing will be called on almost any pretext, and the group is turned loose on the problem without adequate preparation, direction, or leadership—and without achieving any close feeling of respon­sibility for solving the problem. In such cases, it is probably true, as critics charge, that the group will seek, or settle for, a compro­mise rather than the best answer, or that it will settle for the most daring idea that the least daring member can accept.

Consequently, many of the more responsible types of creative persons have become somewhat suspicious of group creative ac­tivities. As a result of one or two bad experiences with improperly used groups, they have developed a resistance to the idea that groups can be valuable adjuncts to a problem-solving effort, and even to the thought that groups can be creative at all. This is un­fortunate because, if used properly, a creative group can be a powerful tool for helping the individual move along toward a problem solution.

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