Group Decision-making and the Big Bump in the Road: the Biden Candidacy

The current crisis of the Biden candidacy is a perfect example of group decision-making gone awry. It is a crisis that was easily seen coming. There are known ways to avoid this sort of crisis in a process, and yet they are rarely practiced.

In most work settings, group decision-making is an essential element of moving things forward. Too often, group decision-making comes down to leaders proposing a solution and then ramming it through. The desire for a shortcut is understandable; group process takes a little - not a lot- of time. Even when there is a "group process", or opportunities for input from the group to the leaders, it rarely influences the outcome. And, participants know that, see that, are disappointed for the lost opportunity to improve the outcome, and devalued because they were not heard.

In the political example of the Biden candidacy, the group is voters. The committee leading the decision-making is the Democratic Party. They decided that Biden must be the candidate, with reasons: the strength of his record and the advantage of incumbency. However, they ignored real concerns voiced from the outset, even from 2020 - that his health and the perception of his physical strength may be non-starters.

There was little to no process to vet this with voters, despite months of opportunity. The robust debate of multiple candidates in 2019 was missing in 2023. There was little discussed to address voter concerns, as if to bring it up would be creating a problem. The issues were swept under the rug.

Until they crawled back out, screaming, last Thursday night. That is often what happens in similar situations, that late in a process when the risks are far greater, the questions come back stronger than ever and put the entire process in jeopardy.

How could this be avoided? By doing outreach to a group of stakeholders broadly defined, by truly listening to the group - in this case voters - early on, and addressing their concerns with consistent updates, options, open discussion, and visible modification to the strategy incorporating their input. It must be a genuine, sincere, transparent process. If applied in this case, Biden may have been the candidate in any event, but perhaps with a different, more successful story and more people and Plan B risk mitigation strategies around him to be a firm foundation for the choice.

Attenuated group process can be an issue in company management or design/construction projects, whether between management and staff, among a inter-disciplinary professional team, in client relations or within the surrounding community.

In a process you are involved in, what decision and associated risk is being swept under the rug and not discussed?

Don't wait until the risk is too high to correct it.