Indicators of Lock-In: II

Lock-in occurs in group decision making, when groups engage in, for instance, negotiations, politics, diplomacy, war, management, and problem solving. It happens when groups fail to adapt to changing situations, rejecting or failing to see alternatives to their choices even when those alternatives are clearly superior. Instead, they escalate their commitment to the chosen course.

Knowing the indicators of lock-in can be helpful to anyone who wants to move a group toward alternatives. Here are four indicators relating to the history of the group's decisions.

Path dependence

Although the group's decisions depend on both its composition and its current perceptions of the problem, they also depend on the path the group traveled in arriving at its current position.

The path traveled determines the state of knowledge within the organization, the hires made, the consultants known and trusted, the sites and locations that were developed, the equipment and software acquired, and many more personnel and physical factors. This history can cause decision makers to persist with a solution beyond the point where they would have if they had a different history.

The need for justification

Closely related to path dependence is the need for justification. The need for internal justification can arise when the decision makers have personally supported choices that led to the current situation. By escalating commitment, they hope that the eventual outcome will justify to themselves both the choice they are now making and all their past choices as well.

External justification is similar, except that the audience of the justifying action is the group's perception of others' assessment of the group's performance.

Inflexibility

To those Detecting lock-in in your organization
can be difficult if you're one of
the decision makersoutside the group, inflexibility is both an obvious indicator of lock-in and difficult to understand. For seemingly unfathomable reasons, decision makers reject alternatives that seem promising.

Because seeming inflexible or irrational can be damaging to one's career, groups that adopt inflexible positions do so most often in desperation. They feel beset. They feel that adaptive behavior will make them seem weak, and thereby cause more damage than inflexibility will.

Closure of alternatives

Closure, or exclusion, of alternatives does not present inherent difficulties in achieving high-quality decisions. However, premature closure of alternatives, or continuing exclusion of alternatives in the face of repeated failure, does threaten decision quality.

When a group enforces or accepts closure of alternatives in the face of failure of its chosen course, lock-in is likely in place. One exception: a person or people who have power over the group's decisions can impose closure. In this case, the lock-in has occurred not in the decision-making group, but in the mind of the person executing the closure.

Detecting lock-in in your organization can be difficult if you're one of the decision makers. To practice, use a different organization — your national or local government probably provides some truly rich examples.   First issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

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