Kennedy fixed groupthink by redesigning the room, not the roster

In April 1961, President Kennedy's national security advisors unanimously approved the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, despite several individual advisors privately harboring serious doubts — a disaster that resulted in the deaths or capture of nearly the entire invading force within days.

The standard response to a decision-making failure is to blame or replace the people involved; Kennedy kept nearly the same team in place for the next major crisis. When Soviet nuclear missiles were discovered in Cuba in October 1962, he needed to redesign how that same team would deliberate, not who was in the room.

Redesigned the room: split ExComm into competing sub-groups, had Kennedy absent himself, and assigned devil's advocates so dissent had cover and survived scrutiny.

Splitting into sub-groups forced independent development of options, preventing premature convergence.

Absenting the leader removed the cue to conform, letting arguments be judged on merit.

Assigning a devil's advocate gave dissent institutional cover, making it safe to challenge consensus.

When a group makes a bad call, don't replace the people—change the process: force independent sub-groups, assign a devil's advocate, and remove the leader's presence to let dissent surface.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, involving the same core advisors who had unanimously endorsed the Bay of Pigs disaster eighteen months earlier, was resolved without war through a negotiated withdrawal of Soviet missiles — historians and ExComm participants themselves later said they were grateful the Bay of Pigs failure came before the missile crisis rather than after, since it directly produced the process changes that shaped the later, successful outcome.