From the Archives: Coming to knowing Group Genius

Originally published March 16, 2014

"In excited conversations we have glimpses of the universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone meditation.  Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was during my second year of teaching 2nd graders in a public school that I first connected with the concept of group genius. I had 22 students and each of them had chosen a subject that they were curious to study and then share their learning with the rest of the class. This was 1965 so there was no Internet and the research was difficult. They had two weeks to prepare.  The only question I can remember with clarity was "Why do soap bubbles have colors?" Many of the questions like this one, were questions that I could not answer without doing my own research. 

Report day arrived and the air was full of excitement. This was work they had done on their own with little support from me. The subjects had only one thing in common, each was personally chosen by the presenter.  The room was set up as theater, honoring whoever was on stage. Each had his own way of presenting their findings.  And then it happened, the entire energy in the room changed. It was charged with excitement and anticipation. My 22 students and myself became one. Something emerged in those few hours that was indescribable but we all felt it and bathed in it.   Despite my degree in education I must admit, I had never really thought about the brain before. I had not really thought about what was going on in the heads of my students, or my own head for that matter. I had no words or explanation for what I had just witnessed - what had turned the room electric -  but I had a deep knowing that something remarkable had happened.

A few years later I came across the notebooks of Lawrence Halprin and saw the words "Group genius" written in a margin. That's it! This is what was happening in my class room! I did not know the science behind the concept of group genius. Words like "emergence",  "self-organizing systems', "complexity" were not used in lay terms in the 60's. But here was Halprin talking about project-based learning with the community. People were learning through doing. That's what I was doing as teacher and facilitator. This is when I noted that when people of all ages designed together ... produced something of value together ... group genius was a likely outcome.

I set my mind on discovering what I could about group genius. Why does it happen? What are the forces that cause a working group to go into a higher order?  Both The Learning Exchange and MG Taylor were partially formed to create a laboratory, a method and a practice where Group Genius was likely to happen, not just with kids, but all ages and cultures.  I went deeper into complexity science, self-organizng systems and project based learning.  I discovered Kevin Kelly's brilliant book, Out of Control, and read the chapter on Assembling Complexity over and over.  I came to a deeper understanding of complexity, emergence, and simple rules for creating healthy self organizing systems through the writings of Steven Johnson,  Fritjof Capra, Stewart Kauffman and Meg Wheatley. Neuroscience has been one of my more focused studies.

My classroom experience was nearly 50 years ago and over this time span I have seen many, many groups escape into the Group Genius mode. I know now with some certainty how to cause it, not control it, but give it freedom to occur. Now finally, through Stanislas Dehance's book, Consciousness and the Brain: deciphering how the brain codes our thoughts, I am understanding what happens in the brain. Dehance is quite metaphoric and yet very specific and detailed in his writing.  The book is on the individual brain but in his description of how the brain creates a work space to assemble complexity.  I can see the very same thing happening with individual brains when they become group genius.  All the individual brains go into the same assemblage causing group genius.  It is a recursive model! Very exciting because now I can do more than feel it, design for it, take part in it ... I can also understand it! As far as I know there is no formal research being done on group genius. Perhaps this will be coming forth soon. I'd love to know more if anyone knows of this kind of particular research happening.  The MG Taylor method and process can provide real time evidence!

“The brain builds itself by laying down large synaptic highways, which become the scaffold of communication corridors from which secondary and tertiary corridors emerge, until a vast “hairnet of axons” covers the brain. Once this hairnet is in place then we have a brain that is able to self-organize an infinite number of connections, thoughts, ideas, innovations and learnings while at the same time behave and direct behavior in dependable, learned ways.”

—Marilyn Hamilton, “The Art and Science of Meshworking” from Integral City

From the Archives: What do you do with an Idea?

Originally published: May 21, 2015

“In the light of the great value placed upon creativity, a stranger to our planet might infer that it is rare indeed. Yet nearly all of the characteristics of the creative mind are present in young children! The child explores the environment, coins words, synthesizes phrases. S/he relishes surprises and copes with a challenge. S/he daydreams, discovers, asks questions unceasingly. Her perceptions are fresh, strictly his own."

Marilyn Ferguson, The Brain Revolution, 1973

My son, Todd, gave me a precious Mother's Day gift.  What Do You Do With An Idea is a book written for the child within each of us.  Kobi Yamada, writer, and Mae Besom, illustrator have produced a wonderful book revealing how ideas come into your life, sometimes invited, sometimes not. 

Where did it come from? Why is it here? What do you do with an idea?

It is true, at least for me, that my best ideas come to me. They do not come from me. It is true that in the beginning, they seem to settle within my head as a tiny seed.  They demand attention. 

I can act like it doesn't belong to me, I can walk away from it.  But it follows me. 

The authors unfold the story as the idea grows and demands attention and stewardship. 

But there was something magical about my idea. I had to admit, I felt better and happier when it was around.

It wanted food. It wanted to play. Actually, it wanted a lot of attention!

It grew bigger and we became friends.

And finally, the idea gets accepted and a friendship evolves...

Then, one day something amazing happened. My idea changed right before my eyes. It spread its wings, took flight, and burst into the sky!

I don't know how to describe it, but it went from being here to being everywhere. It wasn't just a part of me anymore...it was now part of everything!

And then, I realized what you do with an idea... you change the world!

A colleague and I once set out to write a book about where ideas come from. We covered our white walls with potential content. Our thoughts were filled with inspiration and ideas that showed up in this book. But, they were far more complex and convoluted.  Now reading this book, I think we missed the mark by not asking the idea for the book to lead us, to write the story. Instead we tried to time box it, control it, influence it with complex ideas.  We let the idea slip away.  But it didn't die; it found a new home, a new way to grow into something wonderful and precious!

In Loving Memory of Gail Taylor, Tomorrow Makers Founder and pioneering change agent

With great sadness, we share the news here that Tomorrow Makers Founder Gail Taylor passed away in her home on Sunday, November 5, 2023. You may have already seen posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, or heard through friends and colleagues. Below is her full obituary.

Gail Goodman Taylor, July 15, 1939 - November 5, 2023
Born to Conrad E. Goodman and Marianna Goodman (Blucher), Gail grew up in a Kansas suburb of Kansas City along with an older and younger brother, Bill and Cary. She graduated from Shawnee Mission High School in 1957 before attending the University of Kansas where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Education in 1961. After college, Gail married Thomas Miller Johnston, a high school classmate, and they settled down in the Kansas City suburb of Fairway. Together they had two children, Jeffrey Conrad (b. 1966) and William Todd (b. 1967).

Gail began her career teaching first and second grade in area public schools, followed by a few years teaching in a Montessori school before deciding to take a different path. In 1972, she co-founded The Learning Exchange, a pioneering educational nonprofit that brought teachers, administrators, business leaders, and students together to collaboratively design and deliver project-based learning programs that were then offered to area school districts. Courses such as Economics in Action, The Unseen City, Art in Education, Cardboard Carpentry, and Exchange City were among the offerings that engaged twenty-two school districts, four private schools, three universities, and thousands of citizens over Gail’s seven-year tenure. The Exchange lived on for more than 25 years, with several offspring that continue different aspects of the work today.

Gail’s and Tom’s marriage ended amicably in 1975. In 1977, Gail married Richard Craig, a.k.a., Matt Taylor, a Kansas City area designer, builder, and founder of the Renaissance Project. In 1979, the Taylors moved to Boulder, Colorado, and co-founded Taylor Associates, which would subsequently become MG Taylor Corporation. The business combined Matt’s background and expertise in architecture and design with Gail’s expertise and passion for collaborative project-based learning, resulting in a professional consulting firm that offered organizations the ability to tap typically dormant individual and collective creativity and direct it toward solving complex organizational challenges in rapidly changing business environments. Here, Gail coined the term “Group Genius” to describe the state of creativity and productivity that emerged from groups she and Matt facilitated.

Over the 1980’s and 90’s, Gail and Matt grew the business throughout the US, serving clients in education, healthcare, insurance, high tech, media and government sectors, among others. In 1996, the Taylors licensed their methodology of collaborative design to an international management consultancy and, subsequently, the “MG Taylor Method” went global. 1997 saw the publication of “Leaping the Abyss: Putting Group Genius to Work”, a book detailing their methodology and including extensive interviews with the Taylors, as well as clients and facilitation team members. By the late 1990’s, they had been featured in publications such as Fast Company and Fortune, with institutions such as The World Economic Forum and the Stanford Design School coming to the Taylors for help in designing environments and processes to help their constituents and students engage with greater creativity and collaboration. 

In 2002, Gail founded Tomorrow Makers, Inc., a nonprofit focused on teaching and facilitating place-based communities to learn better, more collaborative ways of working together. Around this time, she and Matt bought a home in the Northern California coastal town of Gualala, which they named “Elsewhere.” When not at Elsewhere, Gail’s work took her to such places as Switzerland, Italy, Canada and Australia, where she facilitated, taught and shared her body of knowledge with a variety of organizations and communities looking to emulate the methodology and ways of working she and Matt had pioneered.

In 2020, Gail and Matt returned to Kansas City, settling in the Commerce Tower in downtown. Though she greatly missed living nestled among mighty redwood trees and within sight of the gorgeous California coastline, she was very happy to be back in the town where she grew up and got her start in her career as teacher, entrepreneur, and community organizer. After getting involved in several new projects reminiscent of her Learning Exchange days, it felt to her, she said, that her life was coming full cycle.

Gail is survived by her husband, Matt, brother William (Bill) Goodman, her children Jeff and Todd Johnston, and two grandchildren, Owen and Connor Johnston. The family is planning a Remembrance and Celebration of Life for Gail in Kansas City in the Spring of 2024.