Do Individuals Solve Complex Problems Better Than Groups?

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Do Individuals Solve Complex Problems Better Than Groups?

SciMed - Horizons

TS-Si News Service

Wednesday, 05 December 2007 20:00

“Wicked” problems confound definitions & solutions

Do Individuals Solve Complex Problems Better Than Groups?

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Albuquerque, NM, USA. A complex problem that changes when you apply a solution is considered “Wicked”. They are so tangled up that there isn't even agreement about their definitions, much less their solutions.

Some examples might include highly controversial issues that defy universal agreement on definitions; e.g., terrorism, problems that require large groups to change their attitudes and behaviors, or healthcare.

But how do you solve a wicked problem — as an individual or by working in a large group sharing ideas via the intranet? What is the best way?

George S. Davidson led a research team at

Sandia National Laboratories that included

Courtney Dornburg, Susan Stevens, Stacey Hendrickson,

Travis Bauer and Chris Forsythe.

Davidson assembled a team that consisted of himself, three psychologists (two of them PhD students), and two

cognition researchers to investigate tools and methods for bringing very large numbers of people together to solve difficult problems via the intranet.

The team anticipated that the group brainstorming could result in a huge pool of ideas that might lead to solutions. They decided to pursue an electronic brainstorming experiment built around the very common face-to-face technique used at Sandia where people submit ideas written on Yellow Sticky Post-It ® Notes.

“In this day and age of email and the internet, our expectations were that computer-mediated group brainstorming, i.e. across the web with no face-to face contact, was going to have the best results,” George S. Davidson says.

“What we found, however, was that people working as individuals were at least as effective and possibly more so than those brainstorming in a group over the web when trying to solve ‘wicked,’ tangled problems, both in terms of quality and quantity.”

Wicked problems are complex problems that change when you apply a solution.

Photo by Randy Montoya.

As the team designed the experiment, the initial issue was deriving a wicked problem with no predefined “right or wrong answer,” Dornburg says.

Dornburg, a Sandia psychologist, attended a new-hire breakfast hosted by Labs President and Director Tom Hunter. During the breakfast, Hunter posed the new hires with a challenge, asking them to think about the implications of two popular models in management

theory.

In one view workers are just another natural resource to be used.
In contrast, the second model sees employees as assets, which can be made more valuable by investing in their development.

Dornburg shared the question with the team, and they unanimously decided to make it the wicked problem for the experiment.

They recruited 120 Sandia employees and contractors and 26 student interns through an internal online daily newsletter and word of mouth to participate in the experiment that lasted four days in August. The participants were broken into two groups, those who worked alone and did not see the ideas of the other participants and those who worked in a group and were able to see and build on the ideas of the other members in the group via the Labs’ intranet. Of the 120 employees and contractors, 69 contributed ideas.

During the experiment, participants logged onto the website anonymously and saw the question displayed at the top of the screen. They were asked to input their ideas — the more the better, but no name calling or abusive language.

The research was unusual because, while studies have been conducted with large brainstorming groups, most have been performed in academic settings with college students as participants. This experiment was, to the research team’s knowledge, the first done in a laboratory/industrial setting over an extended period of time.

In addition, most previous studies looked only at quantity — number of responses — while only a small number examined the quality of the ideas. The Sandia experiment analyzed both. Responses to Hunter’s question were scored by team members according to originality, feasibility, and effectiveness. Responses were also analyzed by STANLEY, a Sandia-developed text analysis tool that looked at common noun phrases and key words.

Group members and individuals working alone provided more than 200 concepts and ideas to answer Labs Director Tom Hunter’s question dealing with two models in management theory. In one view workers are a natural resource and in the other they are assets. Each concept was explored and analyzed.

“We were amazed at the length and quality of the responses, both from the people working as a group and those working individually,” Dornburg says. “People were very engaged, often writing long, detailed responses.” She adds that what was most interesting is that the quality of ideas from the people responding as individuals was “significantly better across all three quality ratings.”

Among themes that emerged from the responses were:

Most participants balked at being managed under a resource-driven model and preferred the asset-driven model.
The participants noted the need to maintain and develop new skills, which conflicts with the constant pressure to secure funding and with being the low-cost provider in Work for Others projects.
Good leaders and empowered employees ask great questions and approach problems with creativity, which builds on employee development. In this vein, one participant suggested the metaphor of “manager as a gardener,” nurturing, developing, but also organizing and weeding.
The need for risk tolerance and institutional courage.

Dornburg says the finding that individuals are more successful than groups in computer–mediated brainstorming suggests a time– and cost–saving potential for companies. Generally, when electronic group brainstorming is compared to face-to-face brainstorming, it is touted as having the advantages of shorter meetings, increased participation by remote team members, better documentation via electronic recording, and cash savings. But the Sandia research suggests that people working to solve problems on their own might involve less time and, thus less expenses, than electronic group brainstorming.

While individuals working alone nominally faired better in this study, Davidson says, the research also indicates that group on-line brainstorming can be effective when ideas are needed from large numbers of people.

“Despite our findings, it still seems reasonable that there may be modes of [as yet, untested] web-based interactions and strategies that would allow the larger group to have superior performance compared to a limited number of participants working alone, even if those participants are able to reason and write about their ideas with brilliance and clarity,” Davidson says.

He expects that in coming years “better software, including threaded discussions with moderators to focus the work and prediction markets to evaluate quality, will become tools that large organizations will use to solve wicked problems.”

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. With its main US facilities in Albuquerque, NM and Livermore, CA, Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.

The experiment was funded by Sandia’s internal Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program.

George S. Davidson manages the Evolutionary Computing Department at Sandia National Laboratories. Before that he managed the Advanced Visualization Department; visual data mining tools combine elements from both of these disciplines. He has also been an active researcher in computer architecture, real-time operating systems, and virtual reality environments during his twenty-five years with Sandia National Laboratories. His current interests include the application of extreme computing to the problems involved in discovering networks in cellular

gene expression and high-level modeling of cells as finite machines.

The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. Sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.

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Last Updated on Thursday, 06 December 2007 03:53

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