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Sometimes, there is no wisdom in crowds.
One myth when working in teams is that there is always wisdom in crowds. What this means is that collective wisdom always provides the best answer and teams work mindlessly towards this.
But the crowd is not always wise!
A few years ago, as part of team building, I played the survivor game. The scenario is that participants have been shipwrecked and are stranded in a lifeboat. As we could only salvage a few items from the sinking ship, we had to agree which items were most important for our survival and rank order them.
Interestingly, in this version, individual and group rankings were done. As the game played out and the correct rank order revealed, most group scores were higher than individual scores. Except for one group.
In that group, there was a survival expert and his score was significantly higher than the rest of the groups.
What this taught me is that deferring to crowd wisdom is useful, but not when there is an expert present. Expert knowledge will always trump the collective wisdom of laymen.
So as we move towards a more collaborative culture, let us not throw the expert out with the bathwater. It is important to know when to defer to the wisdom of the crowd.
