Bulldozer00's Blog

Everyone has heard of the term “groupthink“. However, have you ever heard of the terms “clanthink” or “spreadthink” applied to a group of people? John Warfield, a prolific systems thinker who’s been ignored for decades by the mainstream, defines these three types of psychological phenomena as follows:

Clanthink = Everyone in the group believes in the idea/concept, but it’s outright wrong. Those outside of the group that don’t believe the idea/concept are ostracized, tortured, killed……. or all of the above.
Groupthink = Everyone believes in the idea/concept, but tantalizingly, it could be either wrong or right. If the group is wrong and all of the the individuals outside of the groupthink circle of membership remain steadfastly silent out of fear of persecution, then the group, and those that that they lead, all suffer.
Spreadthink = Everyone in the group places a different level of importance and meaning on the idea/concept.

Classic clanthink examples are: 1) the massive group of flat-earthers back in Columbus’ time; 2) the church-brainwashed, sun-revolves-around-the-earth-because-humans-are-the-center-of-the-universe gang back in the Galileo era. Can you think of others, besides whack jobs like: Hitler’s inner circle,  Enron executives, George W. Bush WMD disciples, the Moonies, scientologists?

Groupthink is  a weaker, but much more common form of clanthink. The cult size is much smaller, but there are many more groupthink groups than clanthink groups, especially in the business domain. Just about every organization in the world is infected with groupthink to some extent because they are hierarchically structured. Hierarchically structured pyramids of rank, privilege, and I’m-smarter-than-you step-ladder-idiots are especially rife with the stank of groupthink. The higher up you go, the more groupthinkage there is. Why? Because (almost) everyone wants to get to the head shed in order to acquire the material riches and titles that hierarchs sprinkle upon themselves. Thus, the exclusive club members: 1) unconsciously accept whatever idea/concept/method the next hierarch above them espouses, 2) kiss ass, and 3) say “yes massa” in order to facilitate their next step up the gold plated ladder of privilege.

In my mind, spreadthink is the most interesting concept in Warfield’s trio. Each person is, duhhhh, an individual. Thus, each person will naturally have an internally created, different opinion on any given issue. In environments that facilitate/enable/catalyze the public externalization of each individual person’s true thoughts and opinions, spreadthink will naturally emerge. In such a situation, assuming that the group has an a-priori agreement on how to make and execute a decision, the “best” course of action may be achieved. Hierarchies, by the physical and meta-physical shackles that the pyramidal structural pattern imposes on their members, are anathema to the diversity of spreadthink. Bummer, cuz the corpo pyramid, an  unnatural structure of human creation, hubris, and self-aggrandizement, isn’t gonna go away soon.

Hierarchy will never go away. Never. – Tom Peters