The Power of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly

Citation

Murphy, A. (2010), "The Power of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 569-571. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437731011070078

This book is immediately visually attractive with a top‐down photograph of a snail's shell on a black background on the front, and the underside of the shell on a white background on the back. The reason the shell image was chosen is elaborated on pages 231 and 232, essentially because “it speaks in three metaphorical ways to the book's themes”. Interesting detail!

The book starts, unusually, with 22 statements of praise from readers whose credentials include the founders of the World Cafe, the creator of the Presence Walkabout, the recipient of the 2007 Right Livelihood Award, the Director of Programmes at the Institute at the Golden Gate, a Director of Nursing Leadership Programmes, and the CEO of New Dimensions Media!

Unusually again, there is specific information about the printing of the book as follows:

[…] we chose paper that had been manufactured by environmentally responsible processes. These may include using trees grown in sustainable forests, incorporating recycled paper, minimizing chlorine in bleaching, or recycling the energy produced at the paper mill.

So, before the reader gets to the contents page it is fairly clear that there was a considerable marketing strategy applied to this and to earlier editions. Fair enough: that incites curiosity, and it led me at least to read the author profiles before starting the chapters. And they are interesting people indeed.

Immediately after the profiles is a page outlining the Berrett‐Koehler publishing philosophy and its commitment to advancing “social and economic justice”, shared profits, sustainability and new solutions to national and global issues (page 234). The reader is immediately in the mode to read the book critically having been explicitly directed into awareness of its design and purpose. So, I began to read the foreword by Peter Senge, the welcome, the glossary of terms and the introduction.

Senge's foreword is a think‐piece about the nature of wisdom and manifestations of collective wisdom. If I were to select two sentences that resonated with my experiences they would be these:

Wisdom manifests in humility rather than arrogance.

All learning arises through doing, but the most frequent problem is the “learning” not the “doing”.

The welcome piece explores the genesis of the collective wisdom initiative and its worldview about the dangers of collective folly. This is followed by the precise meanings of the terms “collective folly”. “trap” and “collective wisdom”: a tad over‐the‐top!

So is there anything new in the book? True, the very extensive combination of citations and references is certainly new. The chapters contain a dizzying collection of anecdotes, illustrations, reports, analysis and sets of recommendations. The range is not surprising if all the acknowledged sources on pages 209‐15 actually did contribute to the book in some way. There are wise lessons from Benjamin Franklin, Carl Jung, NASA, Chadrin, C.S. Lewis, Tolkein, George Elliot and Barak Obama, among many others. There are cute stories about American baseball games, stories about individual bravery and collective courage. Truly the book is eclectic, and is in places immensely stimulating and uplifting. As a cohesive read, though, it is at times confusing, at times irritating. There are areas where understanding and insight are profound, other places where there is superficiality and naivety, with little understanding or insight.

As a female reader with a track record in development in Europe and a number of African countries I found some lessons in the book about wisdom and folly ring true. On the other hand, I found little that questioned the basis of political power in a profound way, little that addressed gender power, or little that focused on economic and human capital in a “wise” way.

The book for me was a tad sermonising and gender‐neutral. It is lacking in a worldview at the macro‐political level that would elevate it to the status of global wisdom. It is safe, sanitised, and overly dependent on carefully selected anecdotes, Americanised worldviews and western sense of justice.

There is a certain comfort in the collective wisdom arrived at by this group of thinkers; it is not radical or politically challenging. Perhaps, the early clue is in the description of the paper used? It is an acid‐free, safe, “green” book that promises a great deal more than it delivers. Sorry!