Innovation foundation Nesta has published guidance on how to use ‘collective intelligence’ in designing public services.
The approach uses new technology to harness the ideas and skills of the public, with the new resource outlining how to use this effectively for group decision making.
Titled How to make good group decisions, it has been produced by the charity’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design and brings together tips from idea generation to evaluation to describe how each stage of decision making can be optimised to make the most of the team.
Its key takeaways include that diversity within a group is highly important, that there is often a quick win in developing teams with cross-cutting skills, and that it is not always efficient – and sometimes unnecessary – for groups to push themselves to find an optimal solution or group consensus. On the final point, agreeing in advance on what is good enough can often maintain quality under pressure.
It also covers points such as how to reach decisions in a group, getting the internal dynamics right, managing uncertainty and avoiding pitfalls at each stage of decision making.
Six stages are outlined for group decision making: goal setting; information gathering; idea generation; idea evaluation; decision selection; and executive and evaluation.
Two brains better
Resource author Aleks Berditchevskaia said: “We know collective intelligence and tools such as group decision making are vital in extending our problem solving capacity, and it can play a key role in combatting the complex issues caused by Covid-19. We all know two brains are better than one, but how do you get the most out of team decision making whilst avoiding group think?
“Working in diverse groups can significantly increase your pool of information and ideas and allow for new ways of doing things. Too often organisations fail to take advantage of these techniques, despite the difference they’d make. Instead, we follow the same old approaches, with no different results.
“Working more openly and collaboratively requires public bodies to develop new capabilities and procedures. We want to support the sector to meet this challenge. It doesn’t need to be about big structural changes but testing new ways of doing things and adopting the most effective.”
The organisation has pointed to a recent example of Adur and Worthing Councils running a climate assembly with a group of 43 citizens. Its director for digital, sustainability and resources Paul Brewer said “the richness of insight was only matched by the depth of connections forged as we worked together”.
Image from iStock
