Why Smart People Stay Quiet in High-Stakes Meetings?

I am doing this wonderful specialization course on "Competitive Strategy and Organization Design", part of my self made MBA curriculum from LMU through Coursera.

While working out my first week assignments around the concepts of Prisoner's Dilemma and Nash Equilibrium, I thought to apply these Game Theory constructs to the situation in the title of the article which I was in fact drafting for a long while, albeit from the perspective of organizational culture. So I thought of keep that draft aside and focus on the Game theory analysis for now!

Nash Equilibrium

Nash equilibrium is a combination of strategies where no player can deviate unilaterally from his current strategy to improve his payoffs.

In the context of high-profile meetings, silence can be a Nash equilibrium for smart individuals if they anticipate that speaking up might not yield a better outcome for them.

In high-stake meetings, everyone wants to look good. If you're the one with the brilliant idea, you might hold back. Why? Because if you spill the beans, what's stopping others from improvising on it, taking credit and looking like the hero? or what if the people in power don't align with it and there is a backlash?.

Therefore All of them stay silent, and a Nash equilibrium is achieved. No one has an incentive to break this silence because doing so might jeopardize their position.

Prisoner's Dilemma:

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a game theory scenario where two individuals must decide whether to cooperate or betray each other, often resulting in a suboptimal outcome when both choose betrayal.

In high-stake meetings, smart individuals may view the situation as a variation of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Cooperate or Betray: Speaking up in a meeting can be likened to "cooperating" by sharing valuable insights. However, if they believe that others might "betray" them by taking credit for their ideas, the outcome could be suboptimal for the individual who cooperates.

Fear of Betrayal: Smart individuals may fear that their contributions will be used against them, leading to a disadvantageous outcome. In this situation, staying silent could be seen as a way to avoid the risk of betrayal, even though it might not be the most productive strategy for the group as a whole.

You could cooperate (share your idea) and hope others do too, which would be awesome if all played nice. But what if they don't? You're left holding the short end of the stick.

So, next time you see someone brilliant staying silent in a meeting, don't assume they have nothing to say. Maybe they're just playing along their game, biding their time, and timing their move to swing big!

Ultimately, the gap between silence and speaking up is in the way people size up their trade offs.

The upsides of speaking up are often felt (if at all) way down the line while the downsides of speaking up are felt right then and there.

Given this pay-off structure, people often end up preferring silence to speaking up. (hat tip: Amy Edmondson)

Prince Ramanan.