Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Yet another statement about what happens in meetings shows itself to be something to toss away.

For some reason, meetings tend to have many statements that are supposed to be proven by time and such but are nothing but folly. I have written about some of these before such as “silence means agreement” and “what happens here stays here.”

Yet another silly statement about meetings is something like, “The majority is smarter than any individual.”

Consider a meeting of eleven persons. Ten are brain surgeons and one is a truck driver. The decision of the meeting regards truck maintenance. The ten brain surgeons vote one way while the truck driver votes another way. The brain surgeons are wiser than the truck driver.

Silly example, huh? Surely the ten brain surgeons will listen to the truck driver. Right? Probably not. They are highly educated and skilled persons. They are all in the same field and they all see things the same way. And they are so smart that they know they have to be careful about trucks. Still, they vote one way, and they are (not) smarter or wiser or more competent or something than the truck driver.

There have been countless studies on synergy and the wisdom of the crowd and all that. Still, we seem to disregard all common sense sometimes and go with the crowd that is going in the wrong direction. We are an odd lot. Let’s try to do better.