From the Archives: When is an Expert Dangerous?

Originally published June 22, 2011

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
Niels Bohr 

What role can be most effective for experts in today's world of collective intelligence?  Most conferences and meetings still begin with "experts" talking to the listeners.  The listeners are to be learning "what" and "how" to think about a given subject.  At best, ideas are being perturbed in the listener’s minds, but not made to think differently. At the end of the talks, listeners have a few minutes left to ask questions and make comments. 

When I have suggested to conference and workshop developers that they not begin with keynote speakers, I am told that no one will come if there is not a draw from the experts. This might be true, or at least true for a while longer, but using an expert to attract does not imply that the expert speaks first and shares what he or she knows up front.  In many ways, this does a disservice to the expert because there is little new learning required by this person. They miss out on the chance to learn new ways to think about their subject ... to grow the knowledge base around their expertise, and to have personal insights gained from wider vantage points. 

In developing the ideas around the MG Taylor DesignShop, Matt and I refused to let experts present their findings up front.  And yes, we had many battles around this way of looking at reality.  In one case, a corporation had just spent a million dollars on an expert report on the weaknesses of their organization and how to improve training and assess employees. They insisted that the expert who did the report give his report up front. We said "no". Finally, the organization relented and we designed a process where the findings of this report could be presented on Day 3 of a three-day event, after a group of 100 employees, ranging from CEO to at-the-counter employees, worked on how to strengthen their organization on all levels.  Starting with a broad scan and visioning, participants worked their way through a focus on the vision and how to ensure it in the shortest possible time frame.  By the time we had the million-dollar report, it was clear that the employees knew how to go way beyond the report in what mattered to them. Each wanted to make a bigger difference, to play a more integrated role, to work with others, to have good feedback systems in place, to build integrity and oneness into the learning/doing processes of the organization.  The report expert was blown away and had only praise for the participants and pointed out a few links that could be strengthened. This report played a valid role, but not as it was intended.  Indeed, it helped validate the organizational mind and provided transparent boundaries for systematic change.  The employees had ownership, something impossible to gain from the findings and sharing of a report or any expertise. 

More and more research is revealing that too much agreement up front prevents participants from finding and sharing new, thought-provoking ideas.  The wisdom of crowds reveals "brilliant answers" only when there is lots of diversity and little agreement at the beginning.  With a few simple rules, crowds can quickly share and learn from the bottom up, resulting in fresh insights and more novel ways of solving a sticky problem. (When We're Cowed by the Crowd)

Every time we have won the battle to give the expert a different role than up front, "this-is-how-you-think-about-this-issue", the results have been rich, and in most cases the experts are more pleased with the difference they have been able to play. 

The next time you plan an event, consider changing the game so that the participants have the freedom to think creatively and differently. Let the collective intelligence surface and cohere so that the expert has an opportunity to learn what is already known and can therefore add only the difference that makes a difference. 

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!