WISDOM COUNCIL

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HOW IT WORKS

"Next time you're in a meeting, watch the rituals of business:
the dueling egos, turf protection, talking-without-listening.
Maybe it's time for a different kind of ritual. Something old."
Fast Company Magazine, How to make decisions like a tribe.

The Wisdom Council looks at complex problems from eight perspectives that make up a sequence of wholeness. These perspectives are aligned with the eight energies of living systems and are represented as eight directions of the compass on a wheel.

Imagine how much more powerful, whole and balanced the decision-making in your organisation could be if attention was given to: 

• Freeing our innate creativity and innovation
• Appreciating the current situation
• Analysing the power and danger implications
• Aligning with purpose and direction of the business
• Maintaining and balancing key systems
• Predicting the future implications
• Developing simple strategies for clear action
• Testing the integrity and enthusiasm for action

The challenge posed by complex problems is that they do not yield to logic and deduction. They are complex because they are made up of myriad interconnected parts whose interdependent relationships are difficult to grasp –eg. the weather, an eco-system, a human organisation. Additionally, complex problems, especially if they involve humans, are adaptive systems – they learn and change, so that what appeared to work yesterday may not work today.

Complex problems require creativity and innovation, and diverse groups are the best source of these. As Charles Leadbeater says in We-Think:

“In reality, creativity has always been a highly collaborative, cumulative
and social activity in which people with different skills, points of
view and insight share and develop ideas together. At root most
creativity is collaborative; it is not usually the product of a
lone individual’s flash of insight.”

Complex problems are more easily understood and resolved when they are looked at from many vantage points. The more people looking the better providing there is a diversity of skills and experience. Alan Kay, an "imagineer" at Disney, is reported to have said, "Perspective is worth 80 IQ points."

In researching complex systems, Scott Page found that groups made up of many people who think in different ways can trump groups of people who are very bright but alike, as they are well organised.
 
Complex problems require us to move beyond information and knowledge to access the collective intelligence and release our innate wisdom.

Wisdom has to do with intuiting the long-view through understanding systems in the context of their larger whole. It is also to do with acting in resonance with what is known to be true and lasting. Only wisdom can guide effective decisions in how we work with challenging issues, both individual and organisational, in the conditions of what Doug Engelbart calls "complexity multiplied by urgency".

As evidence of our inability to resolve complex problems, research on nearly 400 companies by Paul C. Nutt found that tough decisions by organisational leaders failed half the time. This is amazing. They might well have flipped a coin!

He identified 10 blunders and traps that decision makers fall prey to and these can be mapped back to the eight perspectives of the Wisdom Council.

We help individuals, communities, teams and organisations develop powerful questions to address the complexity they face and then use the Wisdom Council to release their collective genius and generate breakthrough solutions.

Find out about the Wisdom Council Process and see some Example of Outcomes from the work we have done.