Mindsharing

Shared expertise leads to quality decisions: that’s the premise of Connecting Decision-Making. It’s a fast and convenient way to work with experts on a strong proposal that has high acceptance among all stakeholders (developers, implementers, clients…).

Fascinated by this topic, the book ‘Mindsharing’ (Lior Zoref, 2015) caught my eye. It quickly turned out, however, that Lior Zoref mainly covers the online sharing of information (ideas, experiences) and illustrates how this can lead to quality decisions for one person. It’s surprising to see the similarities with our concept of Connecting Communication.

Collective intelligence

Just as Francis Galton had a crowd guess the weight of an ox in 1907, Lior Zoref repeats the estimation experiment with his TedEx audience. And guess what… Although some estimates were ridiculously high and ridiculously low, the average turned out to be off by just one kilo!

A large group of laypeople turns out, not only in this experiment, to be able to make estimates with an accuracy that surpasses the advice of experts.

This gives food for thought about what collective intelligence could mean if we don’t just use it for estimates, but for generating ideas and finding solutions.

Using your network to answer your questions and realise your dream

The book ‘Mindsharing’ not only contains a series of compelling examples of what it can yield when you tap into your network (and your friends’ networks). To start with, the book itself is the result of co-creation. At one point, Lior launches his dream of sharing his expertise on mindsharing. It’s his network that gives him the push to make it happen. Along the way, he not only keeps his audience informed but also consults them with very concrete questions: what would make a good introduction, tips for getting through the final stretch…

Some other examples that sparked my imagination:

• finding an internship to get a feel for work in a different sector;
• patients sharing their own medical data, which brings unusual side effects to light;
• receiving support and suggestions following a personal testimony;
• finding small assignments to gain experience in a new job;
• …

Some tips if you want to give it a try

If you want to use your network to find ideas and solutions, there are a few conditions to keep in mind:

• your group needs to be large enough (>250 people);
• contributors should be independent, free-thinking individuals;
• your group needs to be engaged enough to want to keep sharing;
• the question needs to be clear (short and to the point).

Ann Ceyssens