Efrain Rosemberg
Efrain Rosemberg
Spain CFO at Microsoft
Track: Soft Skills
Mindful Organizing as a Determinant of Collective Forecasting Performance
Effective forecasting within organizations is intricate. It requires building flexible models that fit ever-changing task conditions and awareness of the—often overlooked—social context, which infuses human judgment and group dynamics in the process. To address forecasting as a socio-technical challenge, this article posits the mindful organizing framework (Weick, 1995; Weick et al., 1999): a combination of collective processes such as attention to errors, reluctance to simplify interpretations, and support of a fluid hierarchy. The article reports the results of an experimental study involving 40 hierarchical forecasting triads, where the treatment groups received interventions to improve accuracy via fostering mindful organizing processes. Treatment groups achieved significantly higher point forecast accuracy than control groups when using the leader’s forecast and a mean of the triad’s individual forecasts (24% and 22% MAPE scores improvements, respectively), suggesting that focusing on the quality of team interactions and error deliberation can enhance judgmental forecasting.