11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The power increases exponentially with the number of those who share and leverage it, October 28, 2009
This review is from: The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly (Paperback)
The importance of what Alan Briskin, Sheryl Erickson, John Ott, and Tom Callanan offer in this book is suggested by Peter Senge in the Foreword. He identifies three reasons. "First, [the material in the book] corrects a misconception, that wisdom is not developable [when in fact it] can be cultivated: through continual reflection, through silence, and through connecting with the highest in yourself and others...Second is that wisdom is not about just a few wise people but about the capacity of human communities to orient themselves around a living sense of the future that truly matters to them...While the world's cultures offer a rich storehouse of stories of extraordinary individuals who exercised wisdom, upon closer inspection what makes the stories compelling is what emerged collectively...But even these examples are misleading, insofar as they start with the central leadership figure. For it is the everyday emergence of collective intelligence in teams, communities, and networks that is most welcome today...Third, the authors show that rather than being a `feel good' concept with little tangible impact, wisdom is all about results, and especially what is achieved over the longer term." Senge nails the essence of what this book is all about far better than I ever could.
For me, some of the most interesting and valuable material is provided in Chapter Three as Briskin, Erickson, Ott, and Callanan focus on what's involved when "inhabiting" a different worldview, one that enables people to "think collectively about the circumstances they face. [This book offers} a guide to reclaiming our participation in groups as positive, necessary, and hopeful without sugarcoating the external challenges we face or the external obstacles that prevent us from seeing new possibilities. Wisdom reflects a capacity for sound judgment, discernment, and the objectivity to see what is needed in the moment. Collective wisdom reflects a similar capacity to learn together and evolve toward something greater and wiser than we can do as individuals alone." The authors identify and then briefly but insightfully discuss five social visionaries who possessed the aforementioned worldview, who contributed to the field of collective wisdom: Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955), Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933), and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Regrettably, Mary Parker Follett has not received the attention and appreciation she deserves. Peter Drucker named her the "prophet" of management. Warren Bennis has characterized her as a "swashbuckling advance scout of management thinking" whereas Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggests that reading any of her works is "like entering a zone of calm in a sea of chaos. Her work reminds us...there are truths about human behavior that stand the test of time. They persist despite superficial changes, like the deep and still ocean beneath the waves of management fad and fashion."
Briskin, Erickson, Ott, and Callanan cite three of Follett's most important insights, the second of which she called the "law of situation." Instead of bringing in outside experts and resources to bolster one side over the other, consistent with the fact that Follett was a staunch advocate of "power with" rather than "power over" in all relationships, she proposed complete and unrestricted use of information to advance transparency of operations. "She saw the power of the scientific method, still nascent in her day, as useful in creating a shared pool of data that everyone could use." Several decades later, Henry Chesbrough would develop this insight in much greater depth in two books, Open Innovation and then Open Business Models. Collective wisdom cannot be created and then leveraged unless and until everyone involved is both willing and able to embrace what C. Otto Scharmer describes (in Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges) as three intertwined "openings" of the mind, the heart, and the will. Only then, Senge suggests, can people learn "how to listen more deeply" and suspend their "take-for-granted mental models" as well as to "connect with one another in that listening, and, perhaps quietly and barely noticed, how to pay attention to why [they] are here."
This is the journey of discovery to which Briskin, Erickson, Ott, and Callanan invite their reader. Throughout their lively and eloquent narrative, they affirm the value of collective wisdom, insisting (and I agree) that it is available to everyone, in any group or larger collective to which one belongs. That said, the authors add, "Our exploration of collective folly, however, reveals the other, far less comforting, implication of Terence's bold claim, `If nothing that is human is alien to me, then I know the poet and the thief, I know the teacher and the terrorist. I know the victim and the perpetrator - they are all within me.' The same is true of any group: We are capable of extraordinary acts of grace and kindness and creativity, and equally extraordinary acts of cruelty and violence. No group is exempt - all that is human is within us."
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out two written by Roger Martin, The Opposable Mind and The Design of Business, as well as Carla O'Dell and C. Jackson Grayson's If Only We Knew What We know, Morten Hansen's Collaboration, James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds, and Seth Godin's Tribes.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why brilliant ideas aren't implemented sooner... and what we can all do differently, November 20, 2009
This review is from: The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly (Paperback)
Collective Wisdom does a great service by helping us orient and tap that rare and powerful experience when groups are wiser than the sum of the individuals that make them up.
The authors start by asking: What creates the conditions for group wisdom to emerge? and offer six core commitments that allow groups to access their potential for sound judgment, discernment, and objectivity to see what is needed in the moment. The book is full of powerful stories that illustrate group wisdom in practice, including an illuminating account of how Benjamin Franklin helped the Constitutional Congress tap the potential for unity. I particularly enjoyed the short biographies of pioneers such as Carl Jung, Mary Parker Follett, Teilhard de Chardin, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who experimented and discovered the early principles for tapping and activating group wisdom.
For those who are cautious about the idea of wisdom coming from any collective, three chapters are devoted to the risk of group folly. It was painful to read about the polarization surrounding Austrian physician's Ignaz Semmelweiss' discovery of simple handwashing practices that reduced childbirth deaths tenfold, but could not be implemented fully due to personalities and politics.
Given this potential for tragic failure, and how interdependent we are on other people, the authors argue that we need to learn, share, and master the conditions that tap the potential for all groups to act wisely. They conclude the book with four mindfulness practices that allow us to experience shifting our perspective so the territory of collective wisdom and the insights possible in groups become real, tangible, and practical.
I found this to be an enjoyable read, peppered with wisdom captured in memorable phrases such as "human survival depends on our recognizing that we have a stake in each other's well-being". I have only one suggestion for improvement: I have worked with several of the authors and have personally watched them contribute to subtle and dramatic shifts in how groups operate. I would have liked to hear more stories about their personal experience and what guided their observations and actions in those moments. The next book perhaps!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Time for Collective Wisdom Has Come, October 21, 2009
This review is from: The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly (Paperback)
One morning, my 11 year old son came home from school and asked me a series of profound questions. He seemed to have a great deal on his mind. He asked, "How are we going to fix the economy? Why are we fighting in Iraq? Will terrorists come to Sonoma? Why are there so many land fills covering up our planet? Can Obama really fix all this?"
I was troubled by the thoughts my son carried in his mind and heart, but I was also hopeful. Clearly, he was talking amongst a group of schoolmates about the matters facing America and the world. I wondered, will a young, and aware group like this come together to help solve today's grave problems? Will they come together and work collectively to do good, long lasting works? Or will they be trapped in decisive viewpoints and belief systems, growing all the more separate and exclusive, to take this country further southward?
The Power of Collective Wisdom and the trap of collective folly eloquently reminds us of what is possible amongst groups, good and bad. Life changing stories and examples throughout the book serve as proof of the immense power that collective wisdom has, when manifested in groups.
I strongly recommend this book to any individual who wants to affect change inside their homes and organizations.
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