Question

Mary, Jane, Janet and Samantha chose each other for a group project since they knew that they were all high achievers. Once the project rolled around however, their group actually did more poorly than the group where all the members knew that others were slackers.

How did that happen?

Answer 1

This could have happened mainly because of two reasons:

1. Arrogance:

When people are confident of their knowledge and expertise, they tend to think that whatever they do will be right and very accurate. This makes them arrogant towards the work they need to finish. The three students were also aware that all the three were brilliant and more than good enough to complete the work successfully. Iy made thee arrogant as they were over-confident of completing the work. But they ended up producing the work that is totally useless and irrelevant.

2. Expertise blindness

When a person is an expert in a specific domain or a subject then it is difficult for them to think differently and create something exciting in it. Expertise if actually the enemy of incremental innovation. The assignment required creative thinking and the three students were only able to analyze and not rationalize. This made them stick to an old method which did not produce the required results.