The Story Behind the Book
Soon after I joined the Fetzer Institute in 1994, the foundation opened Seasons, it’s 24-bed retreat center. I was trained, along with a number of other staffers, in Bohmian Dialgoue. With this training, the Seasons facility and the weekly gatherings and dialogues that were convened there, soon became an experimental think tank in many forms of collective practice and engagement.
I soon became aware of and fascinated by a growing number of experiences of collective flow and synergy. In an effort to begin to understand the phenomenon and identify leading thinkers and practitioners in the field, I initiated a preliminary study of the field that produced a report published in 2001 titled Centered On the Edge: Mapping a Field of Collective Intelligence and Spiritual Wisdom. That study launched a seven-year series of efforts that helped to develop what is now known as the field of “Collective Wisdom.” All of these efforts eventually resulted in the publication of the book, The Power of Collective Wisdom.
A cover story in the May 2004 issue of What is Enlightenment Magazine written by Craig Hamilton captures the excitement during the early stages of this exploration. Here’s a segment of that article that speaks to Fetzer’s and my involvement in the movement.
“Anyone who hadn’t been living in a cave for the past fifteen years has probably noticed the surge of interest in mind/body healing that has recently swept the West, and particularly the U.S.. From PBS’s immensely popular Healing and the Mind series with Bill Moyers to the superstar status attained by Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil, we’ve seen the field of mind/body medicine gain a firm foothold in the modern psyche seemingly overnight. But what hasn’t yet made it onto Oprah is the unique, catalytic, behind-the-scenes role that the Kalamazoo-based Fetzer Institute has played in this explosion. And, more importantly, what collective intelligence has to do with it.
A small, endowed foundation with a spiritual mission, Fetzer has, since it’s inception in 1962, earned the reputation as one of the primary sponsors of the research into the upper reaches of human potential. But unlike most foundations, which issue grants to fund individual projects, Fetzer is what’s known as an “operating foundation,” which means it takes a more hands-on—and more collective—approach. As program officer Tom Callanan explains it, “We proactively go out into a field and ask: “How can we help advance this field?” We pull the leaders in the field together, and then instead of competitively giving grants to the best projects, we say, “we’re going to support a project to advance the field. How are we going to work together to do that?”
As part of its mission to bring thought leaders together, in the mid-nineties Fetzer build a small conference center in southwest Michigan, where it began to host a series of think tanks with the leading luminaries in mind/body health. The goal, Callanan explains, was “to create a container where breakthrough thinking could happen.” But as the discussions got under way, what soon became clear was that it takes more than great thinkers to make a think tank. As Callanan put it, “Good conversation doesn’t just involve getting the best people in a room and saying, “Let’s talk.” Occasionally, an unexpected intimacy and vulnerability would emerge between the participants. But often the groups struggled to find cohesion. At times, something magical would occur, and a remarkable collective creativity would be unleashed. But at other times, the dialogues ended up being little more than a sharing of diverse ideas and opinions. They had all the ingredients of a good think tank. But for a foundation whose goals was to “support the cutting edge of individual and social transformation,” the results were too unpredictable.
It was out of this recognition that in early 2000, Fetzer launched a research project to begin to look for ways to increase the effectiveness of its dialogues and to deepen its understanding of the dynamics of group wisdom. What was this experience of “magic” that emerged when groups were at their best? What was the mysterious intelligence that often seemed to accompany it? And more importantly, what were the conditions that would make it more likely to occur? With these questions as a leaping off point, a handful of researchers began to pull together the fragments of a field still in its infancy, to see what had been learned by those who had already been working with group intelligence and how they could be encouraged to join forces to move the field forward.
It wasn’t long before they realized they had gotten more than they had bargained for. Alan Briskin, an organizational consultant with a long history of working in groups, was one of the initial researchers on the project. As he explains it, “We began by simply seeking out people who we thought might be able to inform us about these questions, and the response was so enthusiastic that people not only welcomed the chance to talk about this, but they directed us to increasing numbers of people in the field. So the project that we had initially imagined would involve talking to maybe eight or nine people grew to over sixty interviews.
The findings of that project were eventually published in a small, spiral-bound 2001 book entitled: Centered on the Edge: Mapping a Field of Collective Intelligence and Spiritual Wisdom. And according to Callanan, along the way, Fetzer learned enough about collective wisdom from its mind/body healing thing tank “to become one of the collective wisdom engines of the mind/body health field.” For Fetzer, however, this initial foray would become but a catalyst for further exploration. Having come across a field that was ripe for pulling together, the research team, headed by consultant, Sheryl Erickson, proposed a new, more comprehensive project that would not only document the body of knowledge that was surfacing but also would serve as a self-organizing structure around which the field itself could begin to take shape and move forward. Excited by what their initial inquiry had opened up, the foundations’ board agreed, and the Collective Wisdom Initiative was born.
Visit collectivewisdominitiative.org and you’ll find a wildly configured conglomeration of information on topics from collective intelligence to collective resonance to group synergy to group creativity. Go through one “doorway” and you’ll land on a long string of “personal profiles” of people who work in the field. People like Jim Rough, whose pioneering “Dynamic Facilitation” process of dialogue has generated phenomenal breakthroughs in the most entrenched of disputes. Or Tom Atlee, whose initiative into collective wisdom during the Great Peace March of 1986 inspired him to found the Co-Intelligence Institute, a networking and research organization committed to tapping group wisdom for social and political change. Click on another doorway and you’ll find a series of interviews with people about their spontaneous experiences of collective wisdom and “flow” ¬– from a Marine sergeant’s description of the deep brotherhood he experienced with his platoon to a police officer’s account of the “collective resonance” that enveloped her and all the other participants at a heated crime scene. On the “Concepts” page, you’ll come across research papers and essays with titles like “Group Magic: An Inquiry into Experiences of Collective Resonance” and “Exploring Essence: Collective Wisdom and Group Experience.” Under “Social Applications,” you’ll learn of an experiment in dialogue that brought leaders together on both sides of the abortion debate—with some surprising results.
Taking in the site as a whole, what becomes undeniably clear is that this phenomenon is real. It is happening. And it is more widespread that one could have imagined. What started as one foundation’s attempt to increase its understanding of “group magic” has become a nexus for a thriving, connecting, and rapidly expanding community of individuals for whom furthering the advance of this new collective potentiality has become nothing less than a life’s mission. Though their efforts, a growing body of knowledge is emerging about the mysterious ways in which collective wisdom works and how it can be cultivated, enhanced, and directed toward the greater good.”
Since the above article was written, the Collective Wisdom Initiative (CWI) website has continued to grow and act as a valuable resource for the field. Four of the most active members of that initiative, Alan Briskin, Sheryl Erickson, John Ott and myself brought together the key findings from the CWI into a co-authored volume, The Power of Collective Wisdom published in 2009. Although I am listed as a co-author, the bulk of the work and writing was done by the others, particularly Alan Briskin who was the primary author and who did a masterful job of integrating everyone’s ideas into a cogent and compelling narrative.
My current work in philanthropy, especially the work of creating a funders network, is profoundly influenced by the above experiences. The hypothesis driving all my work is that we’re better together than alone. Given this, the question becomes, “how can we best come together, listen to what’s wanting to happen, and then combine our dreams, skills and talents to create projects and outcomes that none of us could ever have conceived of or accomplished alone?”
