Chapter 8

A NEW CONTEXT FOR TRANSFORMATION

“Atom-splitting” is too mild a description for the sheer force of this collective consciousness. Not a gross physical sense of force, but a force of intelligence that no words can encompass. It permeated every possible space within the small room we were meeting in. It said “no” to separation; it engulfed any insistence that we need to produce anything to make this happen. It is us. It is our life on the edge of creation. Our minds, hearts, voices—all were one in this, united in a vortex of boundless positivity, on a mission to evolve by any means necessary.⁷

While the jury's still out on what exactly collective wisdom is, one thing no one seems to be debating is the fact that it is a powerful force for change. Throughout the literature of this emerging field are countless testimonials to the awesome power of collective mind and its mysterious capacity to transform the individuals and groups it touches. And among those who have experienced it, the conviction it evokes is nothing short of religious.

First, there is the impact on the individuals involved. “A year of therapy could not do what being held in a group can do,” Anne Dosher observes. “I've seen miracles happen. I've seen people being born again. Once they were given an opportunity to be in a circle where they were held to be responsible, they became healed and connected and able to find a purpose for their lives.” For Dosher and many others, the discovery of collective consciousness is not simply a new and helpful complement to the spiritual path. It is the very foundation for individual transformation. As Otto Scharmer sees it, “What's new today in the world is that now the first and most accessible gateway into deeper spiritual experience is not individual meditation but group work. What happens is that, in quite a spontaneous way, you tap into this deeper process of awareness and consciousness as a group. And then, once you have done that, you can say, 'Well, I want to sustain this quality in my own life, so therefore I will pick a practice or two to do on a day-to-day level.' I think that for many people today, the collective is the most important teacher on this whole journey, because it allows us to explore a territory that is much less accessible, if at all, for individuals.”

Beyond the individual benefits, of course, there is the benefit to the group itself. “When groups get really good at this and practiced at it, it can lead to very fast decision making,” Robert Kenny points out, “because you're drawing on intuition, which is a way of direct knowing as opposed to a linear process of rationality and discursive logic.” Part and parcel of this collective intuition seems to be the capacity for truly original thinking that can often lead to breakthrough solutions. Glenna Gerard, coauthor of Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation, explains, “When the group has really come together and there is collective wisdom present, there seems to be the ability to generate thinking that transcends what any one individual has thought before. It really is new thinking.” But to Gerard, what is perhaps most distinctive about the kind of intuition that emerges in groups is its ability to reflect a sense of the whole. “I think one of the functions of collectives is that we become able to add what we see through our different individual lenses into the center, and the collective then becomes an instrument for perceiving the whole.” This kind of vision can have dramatic effects. “When this happens, individuals act differently, both in the circle and then as they move out of the circle,” Gerard continues. “There seems to be some heightened, embodied knowing about interdependence. Such individuals become agents of the community. They don't give up their individuality, but for example, when they speak about the purpose of the team, they speak from a shared understanding. Their actions and choices are informed not only by how they see something but by how that's going to sit within the whole. There is this kind of collective responsibility.”

The potential for groups to access a larger, holistic perspective is something that has excited collective consciousness researchers and practitioners from the beginning. Indeed, it was this capacity for discovering wholeness that served as much of the catalyst for David Bohm's own enthusiasm for the power of dialogue. For Bohm, as for many of those who are working in the field today, it was this higher order of thinking that held out the greatest promise not only for the transformation of individuals and groups but for the healing of our fragmented world.

Chapter 9

A TIPPING POINT

I'm noticing a new way of working together, where our interest in what is possible—from the most creative to the most practical—comes deeply alive and our flow of ideas is like a dance, where we are each paying attention to one another, taking in the thinking and research that each individual has done prior to the meeting, and responding in such a way that we really come together. It is so far from any meeting I've ever had in any other work setting—and I don't know how it is happening—but we're able somehow to bring forward the ideas we have without being attached to them, and without our identity being wrapped up in them. It is as if this creative mind just sweeps down on us, and the more we pay attention to each other and keep open the space between us, something else happens.⁷

IT'S RARE TO FIND CONGRUENCY IN ANY FIELD, let alone one that is still in its first stages of emergence. But among the twenty-plus researchers and practitioners I spoke with for this article, and the many more I read, nearly all had arrived at the same burning question: How can we use collective wisdom to change the world? Perhaps it has to do with the awesome power revealed in these experiences. Discovering a force with such potent capacities, it seems natural to ask how one might harness such a power to create positive change. Or perhaps it owes to the collective nature of the phenomenon itself. It makes sense, after all, that if such a thing as a group mind came into existence, its concerns would necessarily be collective ones—that its emotions, its will, its conscience would inherently be tied to matters of greatest significance to the whole. But whatever the source of its unified aspiration, what's clear about this collective consciousness is, when it puts its mind to something, it's a force to be reckoned with. As this fledgling field enters its second decade, several major movements and initiatives are already under way, with a vision for bringing the power of the group mind to the complex dilemmas facing our beleaguered planet.

“Any innovative path forward through these very complex issues—whether it's the environment or water or AIDS or the kind of divisiveness that's being exacerbated around the world right now—is going to come through real conversations about questions that matter.” As co-originator of the burgeoning international “conversation movement” known as the World Café, Juanita Brown is a woman who knows whereof she speaks. Along with her partner, David Isaacs, and other World Café hosts around the globe, she is applying what she's learned in her twenty-five years as a senior-level corporate strategist and researcher toward the creation of a dialogue modality capable of nurturing large-scale social change.

And it seems to be working. Since its inception in the mid-nineties, the World Café's innovative approach to large-group inquiry has spread to five continents and been engaged across a broad range of organizational and social settings. In the Middle East, it was recently used to assist in bringing new perspectives to tough Israeli/Palestinian conversations. Mexican government and corporate leaders have applied its methodology to scenario planning and national social development. And in Singapore, it is now being used in several government ministries to support the nation's goal of becoming a “learning society.”

And the World Café is but one of a handful of collective intelligence movements with aspirations to transform our global culture. Mitch Saunders' Laboratory for Social Invention project is attempting to harness collective thinking to prevent civil war in Venezuela, Liberia, and Indonesia. Harrison Owen's “Open Space Technology” has been used to successfully bring about a ceasefire in a bloody, seven-year-long conflict between two ethnic nationalities in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. And here on the home front, organizations like Sandy Heierbacher's National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation are working to reinvigorate the democratic process by mobilizing groups of citizens to think together about the country's future. From Dynamic Facilitation to Deep Dialogue to Appreciative Inquiry, new collective technologies are spreading across the country and to the corners of the earth, mobilizing and empowering countless organizations and communities to reach for innovative solutions to their most troubling social dilemmas.

In keeping with the inherently cooperative emphasis of the collective wisdom movement, most of these approaches tend to be self-organizing or “bottom up,” lacking any central governing structure to steer them. And this absence of a strategic body guiding and controlling the effort is certainly an important part of the magic that is allowing it to spread so far and so rapidly. But while this grassroots collective activism no doubt has the potential to play a major role in catalyzing large-scale change, there are at least a few individuals who feel that a more centrally organized approach is also needed to grapple effectively with the magnitude and complexity of the challenges we face. Inspired by the possibility of creating a unified planetwide transformative team, a small group of dynamos out of Boston are about to launch what may be the single most ambitious collective wisdom effort yet. Determined to grapple head-on with the most troubling problems facing the world today, Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, Otto Scharmer, and their team of colleagues are rolling out the Global Leadership Initiative—an effort that aims for nothing less than to “generate a 'tipping point' in humanity's ability to address its most critical global challenges.” By developing a network of leaders “from all sectors of the human community—who understand how to harness the collective power of small groups to co-create better futures,” over the next five years, they plan to “launch ten international projects that will address inherently global challenges, such as AIDS, malnutrition, water, and climate change.” And what's more, they intend to do it with “a standard of excellence and professionalism unsurpassed by any other organization or institution.”

In our cynical age, it's not often that you find a group of people so confidently optimistic about their capacity to bring about significant global change. But before you write off this activism-on-steroids as the product of naïveté, hubris, or hyperbolic idealism, consider that the individuals at the helm are some of the most influential organizational minds in the world. In their work at MIT, Generon Consulting, and the Society for Organizational Learning, these management moguls have been pushing the envelope of collective learning and innovation for two decades. At the vanguard of large-scale systems change and leadership development, they've worked closely with multinational corporations, government agencies, and NGOs throughout the world.

At the heart of this initiative is a deep conviction in the potential for small groups to generate breakthrough thinking. Over years of “action research,” they've developed what they feel is a “rigorous” state-of-the-art methodology for “creating unified learning fields in which teams made up of highly diverse individuals become capable of operating as a single intelligence.” Using collective wisdom to actually solve our most pressing global problems, it turns out, is a dream that may not be as outlandish as it seems. Even a few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine such an idea being taken seriously by business and government leaders. But these are indeed rapidly changing times. And given the receptivity these pioneers are finding to their vision, there is at least the possibility that a lot more positive change may be in store for us all.