Tap the wisdom of an entire group!

"Every journey has a secret destination of
which the traveler is not aware."

The concept of 'Wise Crowds' makes it possible to instantly
engage a small or large group of people in helping one another. You can set up a consultation with one small group of
four or five people or with many small
groups simultaneously or, during a larger
gathering, with a group as big as one
hundred or more people. Individuals,
referred to as "clients," can ask for help and get it in a short time from all the other group members. Each individual consultation taps the expertise and inventiveness of everyone in the group simultaneously. Individuals gain
more clarity and increase their capacity for self-correction and self-understanding.
Wise Crowds - develop people's ability to ask for help. They deepen inquiry and consulting skills.
Supportive relationships form very
quickly. During a Wise Crowds session, the series of individual consultations makes the learning cumulative as each participant
benefits not only from being a client but also from being a consultant several times in a row. Wise Crowds consultations make it easy to achieve transparency. Together, a group can outperform the expert!

Structuring Invitation:

~ Ask each participant when his or her
turn comes to be the "client" to briefly
describe his or her challenge and ask
others for help
~ Ask the other participants to act as a
group of "consultants" whose task it is
to help the "client" clarify his or her
challenge and to offer advice or
recommendations.

How Space ls Arranged and Materials Needed:

~ Groups of 4 or 5 chairs arranged
around small tables or in circles
without tables
~ Paper for participants to take notes

How Participation is Distributed:

~ Everyone is included
~ Everyone has an equal amount of time
to ask for and get help
~ Everyone has an equal opportunity to
offer help

How Groups are Configured:

~ Groups of 4 to 5 people
~ Mixed groups across functions, levels,
and disciplines are ideal
~ The person asking for help, the
"client" turns his or her back on the
consultants after the consultation
question has been clarified

Sequence of Steps and Time:

|Allocation
Each person requesting a consult (the client)
gets fifteen minutes broken down as follows:

~ The client presents the challenge and request for help.
clarifying questions.
~ The consultants ask the client clarifying questions.
~ The client turns his or her back to the
notes
~ The consultants ask questions and
offer advice, and recommendations,
working as a team, while the client has
his or her back turned.
~ The client provides feedback to the
consultants: what was useful and what
he or she takes away.

Tips and Traps:

~ Invite a very diverse crowd to help (not
only the experts and leaders)
~ Invite participants to critique
themselves when they fall into traps
(e.g., jumping to action before
clarifying the purpose or the problem)
See Helping Heuristics for a complete
list of unwanted patterns when helping
or asking for help
~ Remind participants to try to stay
focused on the client's direct
experience by asking, "What is
happening here? How are you
experiencing what is happening?"
~ Advise the consultants to take risks
while maintaining empathy
~ Avoid having some participants
choosing not to be clients: everybody
has at least one challenge!
~ If the first round is weak, try a second
round
~ Invite participants not to shy away
from presenting complex challenges
without easy answers

Riffs or Variations:

~ Restrict the consulting to asking only
honest, open questions, focusing on
helping the client gain personal clarity.
In other words, forbid
recommendations and advice (thinly veiled as a question) or any speeches
whatsoever!
This is also called Q Storming and is similar to a Quaker Clearness Committee
~ Can be used with groups of up to 7
people but not more
~ The "large format" of Wise
Crowds makes it possible for one
person to ask a whole room for help
See the detailed description of the five
structural elements/specs below
Use all of this with virtual groups
by using the chat function to share
answers from a small number of
consultants, then opening the chat
line and whiteboard to the whole group for additional feedback
link to and string with helping
Heuristics plus Heard, Seen,
Respected (HSR), Nine Whys, Troika
Consulting, What I Need From You,
and Appreciative Interviews. These
Liberating Structures offer a variety of
productive choices for helping.
~ Use with virtual groups by creating a
series of chat rooms. The groups then
select a handful of sessions they want
to attend.
~ String together with improved
prototyping to generate variations orn
ideas presented.

Purposes:

~ Generate results that are enduring
because each individual and the group
produced them together without
"outside expertise'.
~ Refine skills in giving, receiving, and
asking for help.
~ Tap the intelligence of a whole group
without time-consuming up and
sideways presentations.
~ Liberate the wisdom and creativity
that exists across disciplines and
functional silos.
~ Replace boring briefings and updates
with an effective and useful alternative.
~ Actively build trust through mutual
support and peer connections
~ Practice listening without defending

Examples:

~ For multisite research/learning groups
to support and learn from each other
~ For professionals in a national
fellowship program to share progress
and get help with the action learning
projects to replace progress presentations and
reviews.
~ For managers trying to solve problems
associated with a merger.
~ For professionals in a national
fellowship program to share progress
and get help with the action learning
projects
~ To replace progress presentations and
~ For managers trying to solve problems
~ For foundation grantees
~ For getting advice on improving
~ For salespeople (distributed over a review associated with a merger
scale up their socio-tech innovations
relationship with one other person
large geography) getting help with
developing and keeping new
customers.

This technique can be used to tap the wisdom of the whole group in rapid cycles.
Structure developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless. Inspired by Quaker Clearness Committees.

More to come!
Feel free to follow.
Have a nice day :)