Collective Intelligence emerges in a search for shared meaning or common ground. Getting a person, pair, or group to join in the search for shared context, and to move from debate to dialogue, makes a vast realm of intelligence available beyond that accessible by the individual mind. Looking from the Gestalt, the whole, rather than from the parts, allows for something new and different to emerge, offering new pathways for effective problem-solving. This contextual, perceptual, intellectual shift opens the way to a greater realm of collective wisdom.
Conclusion
A remarkable client story captures the basic elements of Breaking Free from the pull of cultural gravity. Woody Beville was Executive Vice President of the Rouse Company during the years the company became famous for pioneering the development of Festival Marketplaces, such as Faneuil Hall in Boston; South Street Seaport in New York City; Harbor Place in Baltimore; and Bayside Marketplace in Miami. Woody was in charge of operations and the expansion and redevelopment of more than 70 malls across United States. Their success bears a remarkable resemblance to what it takes to break free of the pull of gravity, go to the moon and back, and see the Earth from orbit or from the lunar surface.
When President Kennedy made his announcement, NASA had just managed to send Alan Shepard on a brief suborbital hop above the atmosphere. The goal of sending a man to the moon and back appeared to be impossible. No one knew how to do it. With this impossible goal energizing everyone involved in the mission, NASA contractors, flight controllers, scientists, and astronauts came together in a remarkable display of Collective Intelligence. They actually beat the President’s deadline by several months! An unexpected but major benefit came with this accomplishment, as the astronauts, and all of us with them, saw the whole Earth for the first time together — as a species we witnessed “Earthrise” as our home planet hung suspended in the lunar sky.
The Rouse Company shift happened during a period when the industry was in complete collapse. Major developers were going bankrupt or being kept alive by banks. Yet during this time, the Rouse Company’s earnings escalated continuously, reaching 30 percent improvements each year. During the worst five years of deep recession, 70 percent of the center management teams consistently met self-created “Impossible Goals”.
When we first met, Woody had talked about the absence of “straight talk,” which was destroying the trust on which everything else depended. People were not telling the truth about what was going wrong or slipping, and bosses were doing the same. I heard the pain in Woody’s voice when he said, “I will no longer work in a place where people don’t tell one another the truth.” At the same time, his dream for the center teams, the people, and the company was a perfectly clear statement of a human values-driven and consistently successful business. The Cognitive Dissonance was obvious and painful, and impelled his willingness to “shoot for the moon.”
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