Verwandte Artikel zu The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective...

The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly - Softcover

Briskin, Alan; Erickson, Sheryl; Callanan, Tom

 
9781576754450: The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1576754456 ISBN 13: 9781576754450
Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

“An exceptional work challenging leaders to question their assumptions about how to achieve organizational excellence . . . a new narrative for leading.” —Carol Pearson, author of The Hero Within

If we are to disentangle the extraordinary challenges that we face today in organizations, communities, and nations we must transcend our divisions and develop solutions together. But what enables us to collectively make wise choices and sound judgments instead of splintering apart?

When human beings gather together, a depth of awareness and insight, a transcendent knowing, becomes available. Based on nine years of research The Power of Collective Wisdom shows how we can tap into the extraordinary cocreative potential that exists in every group. Collective wisdom is elusive and unpredictable—it can’t be willed into being, but the authors describe six commitments people can adopt that will increase the likelihood of its appearing. Stories and historical examples throughout serve to illuminate and illustrate how collective wisdom has emerged in a range of settings and through the lives and traditions of varied cultures. Equally important, the authors describe how to recognize the pitfalls of polarization or false agreement, either of which can lead to collective folly—a phenomenon with which recent history has made us all too familiar. And they offer a set of practices to help readers maintain the key lessons of the book.

The Power of Collective Wisdom is a foundational book for an emerging field of study and practice relevant to everyone seeking more effective and satisfying ways of working with others.

“This book takes knowledge about groups and elevates it to a field and a movement.” —Peter Block, author of Community and Stewardship

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alan Briskin is author of the award-winning book The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace and coauthor of Daily Miracles, which earned the American Journal of Nursing’s Book of the Year award in the category of Public Interest and Creative Works. He is coauthor of Bringing Your Soul to Work: An Everyday Practice. Alan is a pioneer in the field of organizational learning and cofounder of the Collective Wisdom Initiative.
His work with groups and collectives extends back to the early 1970s, when he was part of an international community in Israel founded on the principles of the communal kibbutz. As an educator, he contributed to the design of schools based on experiential learning and was the director of education for the Vermont group home that became the model for deinstitutionalization of confined youth. His interest in alternative educational settings continued for over ten years when he was the principal consultant to the George Lucas Educational Foundation.
John Ott has designed and led successful collective change efforts for almost thirty years. He has worked with cities, counties, and large human services systems, designing and leading participatory budget processes to resolve gaping deficits. He designed and led the initial community change processes at the heart of Smart Start, a statewide initiative in North Carolina designed to ensure that every child begins kindergarten healthy and ready to succeed.
At the core of his work is a commitment to help diverse groups of people, often who have profound and contentious disagreements, learn how to create spaces of collective discernment and right action.
Sheryl Erickson has been principal investigator for the Collective Wisdom Initiative since 2000, seeking to articulate a field of study and practice now identified as that of collective wisdom.
Tom Callanan is a senior advisor and former program officer at the Fetzer Institute, where he helped to cofound the Collective Wisdom Initiative (CWI) in 2000. During his time as program officer, CWI informed the projects in his port- folio with the notion that it’s possible to convene groups to create greater impact than could be accomplished by anyone alone. Through his work with the institute, Tom has helped to establish a number of internationally recognized initiatives, including the following:
We Speak as One: Twelve Nobel Laureates Share Their Vision for Peace: The result of a three-year project that engaged peacemakers in developing a unified moral and spiritual voice. The laureates have since issued a global call to action based on this project. See the book and visit www .peacejam.org.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Collective and Wisdom
Makes the Difference

It started with a bolt of lightning in an area of wilderness known as Mann Gulch in Montana. In a telling case study of collective failure, twelve young smokejumpers and a forest ranger lost their lives battling the flames that erupted. Everything that could have gone wrong that tragic day seemed to, including the final moments when an action was taken that might have saved them. Wagner Dodge, who headed the crew, came up with a brilliant tactic. As the flames from the fire whipped their way toward the men, he bent down and lit a fire to the grass in front of him. As the fire spread, it burned in a widening circle. Standing in front of this wall of flame, he stepped through onto a small charred patch of ground that allowed him to “hide” within the larger body of the blaze. This was not a backfire, in which an area of ground is burned in front of an oncoming blaze to create a firebreak. There was no time. This was simply a case of an in-the-moment reaction.

From within the burned-out patch of ground, Dodge beckoned the two men closest to him to follow him in. They could not hear him amid the sounds of exploding trees and screaming winds, but they could see him frantically waving, motioning them to follow him inside the circle. Instead, they glanced his way and kept going. And then the rest of the men passed by, not one of them following their crew chief into the safety of the circle. With the exception of Dodge and two men who miraculously stumbled into an area barren of vegetation, everyone perished. It was the worst disaster in Forest Service history.

There were certainly lessons here about leadership, especially in this particular circumstance, which later documented failed relationships among the crew and a command-and-control style of leadership. There were also lessons about the need for cooperation, trust, teamwork, and coordination, lessons the Forest Service took seriously and which transformed their ways of preparing teams rather than just individuals.1 Yet, at a deeper level, there is a more fundamental question. What allows us, in groups and larger collectives, to find solutions amid complexity and daunting circumstances, to make wise choices and work together, as opposed to splintering apart and failing to see what opportunities arise? How can we together find solutions to pressing and bewildering problems that face us every day? How can we know when and how to join with others, stepping through fire if necessary?

The failure at Mann Gulch was not due to any one element alone; the science of firefighting was at an early stage, wind direction is always unpredictable, and bad luck played its part. We all understand how external conditions can dictate the outcome of a situation. What stood out, however, from the studies that followed was something internal to the group. There had been an assumption, which proved tragic, that men individually trained, put on a plane without even knowing each other, and given orders to obey their crew chief without question would know what to do when their circumstances changed dramatically. There had been precious little understanding about how to prepare groups to improvise when necessary and trust in each other.

The lessons learned from Mann Gulch were not a call for just any change, but for a change in thinking about how to save lives. The tragedy moved the Forest Service in the direction of thinking collectively: how to train men together and create greater collaboration among the various disciplines involved with fire safety. They dedicated themselves to the question of how best to make sound judgments as teams and to cultivate the intelligence that existed from the bottom up, from the smokejumpers and firefighters who fought the fires. It is a lesson we must now learn on a much larger scale.

The Power of Collective Wisdom is a call for people to come together to think collectively about the circumstances they face. It is a guide to reclaiming our participation in groups as positive, necessary, and hopeful without sugarcoating the external challenges we face or the internal 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 what we can do as individuals alone. This book emerges from a deep conviction that we have a stake in each other and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart.

THE NEED FOR THIS BOOK

We must find insight and ways to cooperate with each other at a depth and scale that is unprecedented. We see this need appearing everywhere—on the front pages of our newspapers, in our organizations, and even within our network of family and friends. If we cannot find legitimate ways to join together, to cooperate and to understand each other, we will not find solutions to the dysfunctionality and messes that seem to be growing all around us, let alone to the largest problems that beset us as nations and as a world community, such as global warming, poverty, and war.

We cannot any longer

image kill our way out of it,

image deny that it is happening, or

image rationalize that this is just the way it is.

If we do not turn the temperature down, literally and figuratively, on the global challenges we face and the polarization and fragmentation we live with on a daily basis, we will be staring down a path of untenable choices. Are we willing to gamble our future and our children’s future on more of the same?

Change happens on a macro systems level but also on a micro level—one conversation at a time, one group at a time, one new idea spawned among a group of committed people, setting off a chain reaction of new possibilities. We believe this kind of transformation not only is possible but has always been the way change happens. Transformation, even on a large scale, has a personal dimension, and each individual matters. We believe such transformation involves a fundamental shift in our thinking, and an understanding and embodiment of collective wisdom.

We believe our capacity for collective wisdom is innate and its emergence in groups catalyzed by awareness of a compelling need and a higher purpose. The global crises we face, ranging from economic instability to resource sustainability, are each day encroaching more on our personal lives. There is a clear rationale for collective action. We see the beginnings of a social movement, grounded in wisdom, percolating up through social networks in the business world, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and cross-cultural affiliations. In every community and organization are those whose uncommon behaviors are empathic, collective in their orientation, and far-reaching in their vision. We already have the human resources necessary to make a difference. Amid the crises we face is also an opportunity for seeking fresh perspectives on a grand scale. This book provides a framework for that search and a name for that movement.

Mark Gerzon, a leading conflict resolution facilitator and leadership trainer, and the author of Leading Through Conflict, wrote to us, “Humanity is hungering for wisdom. That is the word I hear most: not compassion; not love; not peace; not kindness—but wisdom. The other words all have deep meaning and their own unique power. But wisdom is the one that seems to magnetize people across the broadest spectrum around the world. I found myself drawn to this word because it is a cross-cutting theme in so many of the very diverse settings in which I am traveling.”2

DEFINING OUR TERMS: COLLECTIVE, WISDOM, AND THE TRAP OF FOLLY

The dictionary defines...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Erscheinungsdatum
2009
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1576754456
ISBN 13 
9781576754450
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
264
Kontakt zum Hersteller
EU Compliance Partner
hello@eucompliancepartner.com

Pärnu mnt. 139b 14
Tallinn
11317
Estland