The collective wisdom is one of the most powerful assets of any organization. Leveraging the collective wisdom of a committee, team, department, or organization increases buy-in and motivation during times of difficult change, strengthens character development and personal accountability, and saves time and money.

WHAT IS WISDOM?

The word wisdom has roots back to the Greeks and means to see, or to know. Wisdom is the accumulated insight, knowledge, and understanding gained by a person through experience. Collective wisdom is the wisdom gained by a group of three or more people.

Wisdom is practical; it's not theoretical or hypothetical. A person who has gained wisdom is someone who has learned a lot through experience and is now applying that wisdom to his or her life in practical ways. They have learned what works and what doesn't.

For example, if you have a team of sales or customer service people, there is often collective wisdom about how to handle an upset customer. Sharing this wisdom and building on it can make the difference between keeping and losing valuable customers. This kind of wisdom is invaluable and saves time and money.

Words of wisdom might include, "Relax and center yourself before resolving a conflict," "Listen to learn," and "Rest before you get tired." Wisdom usually evolves into the guiding principles or values of a person or organization and guides decision-making and action.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF COLLECTIVE WISDOM?

The advantages of leveraging the collective wisdom of a team, department, or organization are numerous. Here are 10 advantages, and the list could be longer.

Leveraging collective wisdom:

• Leads to faster consensus, buy-in, and higher levels of trust.
• Builds expertise and talent.
• Provides more reliable results, faster.
• Builds a culture where everyone's voice is included. This increases enthusiasm, confidence, creativity and productivity, and decreases turn over.
• Builds a foundation for future change and growth.
• Preserves the culture's core values, traditions, and valuable knowledge.
• Makes succession planning easier and more successful.
• Honors everyone's experience and respects diversity.
• Leads to conflict resolution, faster.
• Saves time and money because you don't have to keep re-inventing the wheel.

One example is a management team that saved millions of dollars and untold amounts of time because they used their collective wisdom to solve a long-standing personnel problem that was headed for the courts. The team gathered weekly for two months. They became honest with each other as they shared the successes and mistakes they'd made in similar cases in the past. They surprised themselves when they came up with a winning solution to the problem, saving the organization an embarrassing court case and precious budget dollars.

HOW DO YOU LEVERAGE COLLECTIVE WISDOM?

There are two steps to leveraging collective wisdom: 1) harvesting the wisdom and 2) applying the wisdom in practical ways.

Harvesting the wisdom is an easy process. Simply start using the art of inquiry and conversation to gather the lessons learned and record the wisdom gained. This can be facilitated during ordinary team meetings, designated gatherings around a specific topic, retreats, trainings, or even around the coffee pot.

For example, I worked with one organization where the customer service department decided to dedicate 15 minutes during each team meeting for people to share their biggest mistakes and successes learned from the week. It reduced the heavy burden of perfectionism and the perceived shame of making a mistake. Staff stopped wasting valuable time and energy hiding their mistakes and instead excelled in their talent. That department became one of the most fun and productive departments in the organization.

The process of gathering wisdom is inherently joyful. It opens the heart and builds bridges among even the most difficult of relationships. Everyone participates; everyone wins. The shared collective wisdom becomes glue that holds the teams together even during difficult times of change.

After you gather the wisdom and record it, apply it to current problems, goals, and projects. Wisdom only becomes wisdom when it is used and applied. In other words, walk your talk.

Do this by looking at a particular problem through the lens of the newfound wisdom. For example, if a leadership team is having difficulty motivating staff to let go of the old ways and adopt new processes and procedures, that team could look at the wisdom gained about motivation, relationships, and change. I've seen this used with great success. One vice president of a large corporation who did this turned her relationship with a staff person around 180 degrees.

Applying collective wisdom becomes contagious. People look forward to it. As a leader, you will be relieved to discover you don't have to come up with all the solutions yourself. You can sit back and relax while staff generates their own collective wisdom and creates solutions at the same time. You'll be surprised how more emotionally engaged they are at work. And the rapid results will create excitement and confidence.

You can't lose. This approach for leveraging collective wisdom is a win/win for everyone. The problems you have today will become creative solutions tomorrow.

Kate Powers works with business leaders who struggle with how to influence and lead during turbulent change. For more information about how Kate can help you, call her today at 415-454-5929.

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© 2003 Kate Powers. All rights reserved. You are free to use material from The Village Drum in whole or in part,as long as you include complete attribution, including live website link and email link. Please also notify me where the materialwill appear. The attribution should read:

By Kate Powers, The Village Drum. © 2003 Kate Powers. Please visit Kate'sweb site at http://www.sustainablechange.org or call her for more information 415-454-5929.

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