Positive Deviance from Collective Stupidity

“You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.”

Photo by Xavier von Erlach on Unsplash

June 15, 2024 — Zurich, Switzerland

I am writing this article under the influence of the elections last weekend for a European Parliament, supported by similar processes in some European countries, and the dominating theme worldwide of the forthcoming US presidential elections.

I could not help but notice how some things keep repeating themselves as far as whom we look up to, how we choose to get involved or not in political life, and where we look for solutions to our current challenges.

Who Do We Look Up To?

In the last decade, I have conducted a great number and variety of Leadership Development workshops with people from all over the world. At the beginning of them, I used to ask people to give me examples of great and bad leaders. No matter in which country I did it, no matter how old or how experienced people were, the list was similar.

The “great leader list” would always be headed by Mahatma Gandhi. If I was in a business environment, it would include Steve Jobs (later on Elon Musk), and a few other predictable names. Steve Jobs would always stir some controversy because his way of leading does not always coincide with our expectations of good leadership and yet, he would head the list because of his results. The list of the bad guys was always headed by Hitler and Stalin.

A couple of things stood out for me. In 99% of the cases, the list would include names of world-famous men (even during women’s leadership events), and people they don’t know personally, usually dead.

At some point, I started to challenge participants to come up with names of people they know personally who are still alive. Nine times out of ten, they would struggle with it. They did not think they knew any great leaders personally. The task with the bad leaders was usualy easier, but then the question whether bad leaders are leaders would usually come.

I noticed that we were not willing to name someone a great leader unless they have achieved some world-known success. As a matter of fact, success was sometimes enough to recognize someone as a leader—for example, some people would go as far as to argue that despite the obvious evil in Hitler’s actions, he could be considered a great leader because he managed to organize big masses of people to work towards his vision. Ew!

So again, the dominant trend is to assign the title “great leader” to people who have achieved some clear success and domination. That same phenomenon is visible in all areas of our life:

• Ask people about a great coach and they will tell you Tony Robbins, and they will not be able to recommend someone they know personally (even though they do). At the same time, many good coaches are pretty familiar with every word coming out of Tony Robbins’s mouth and, in my humble opinion, they often surpass him in expertise.

• In a recent article,

  Tim Denning
  shared that celebrities like Britney Spears sell tons of books. Also, classic bestsellers sell tons of books. However, very few contemporary authors would sell more than 1,000 copies. Probably, there are many exceptions, but the overall trend is that we read celebrities and classics.

In every area of life we look, we’ll find a few individuals being celebrated and hundreds of thousands of people worth just as much or more who no one knows about.

We act of the assumptions that celebrities are smarter because they’re more successful, and also that it is safer to consider someone great if they are dead (probably, because they cannot do something to disappoint us).

I say “nonsense” to that.

The world is full of worthy people but we do not notice them.

Altogether, we are not very conscious of how we allocate the power we have been given. I’ve written more about that in the article: “Next Time Someone Wants to Empower You, Tell Them 'I've Got This'!”

There are amazing people all around us who we fail to acknowledge either because we look too close and focus on their imperfections or because we can never think that there could be greatness so close to us.

We also associate greatness with fame and financial results and that is pretty stupid if you ask me.

Alongside that inability to recognize greatness close to us, we are ready to abdicate from our own agency in the belief that someone smarter than us will come and save us.

How Do We Assign Power?

Officially, most of us live in representative democracy. I argue otherwise in my article "Technofeudalism, Enshittification, and You," but let’s leave that aside for now and focus instead on how we assign our power by choosing our representatives, or not.

I noticed some archetypes and decided to describe them, but I would love it if you add to the list! I am sure there are many more. So here we go:

The Guardians

These are the proactive guardians of the “Matrix.” Some are loud and feisty, others are quiet. Here are the types I’ve noticed:

— The Hard Core: They have attached their identity to a specific political and economic system and they are not going to change their vote no matter what happens in society (unless of course they go through some personal crucible event). I am writing more about that in the article "Our Identity: Too Stuck or Under Threat?"

— The Anti-Disrupter: These guys don’t want to ruffle any feathers. They have settled in comfortably and do not want any change that may disrupt their status quo. Yes, they know that it's not all roses, so they might be investing time and money in causes that make them feel good. Altogether, anything but a disruption because it may threaten the life they have built for themselves.

— The Upwardly Socially Mobile: These individuals are ambitious and have clear plans for themselves that involve climbing higher up in the system. It’s not that they like the current system… They just have too much at stake. They have already invested in getting to know the rules of engagement and do not need a change. And that’s understandable—how can you climb high if you do not know well the terrain?

— The Sleeping Beauty: These people have fallen “asleep” at some point in the past and they make choices according to whoever could be trusted then. That usually means that they would trust someone from the mainstream since this is all they know. You’ve seen them—at 60 they wear the same clothes and hairstyle as when they were 20, and in adulthood they claim that the best years of their life were back in school.

The Resignees

They are mostly critics of the “Matrix.” Yet, they’ve resigned from their duties as citizens in a representative democracy.

— The Skeptic: They don’t care to vote or act in any way because they believe “everyone is bad” in politics, and therefore, there is no point in participating.

— The Quant: They also think that everyone is bad, but they also believe that they must vote. Therefore, they will consider everyone and vote for the “least bad one” despite clearly knowing they would not represent their values and hopes for the future.

— The Healer: They believe that change will not happen through any of the political processes but through healing—individually and collectively. To be able to contribute as healers, they isolate themselves from participating in these processes and contribute through their work.

— The Off-Grider: They don’t believe that positive change is ever going to happen through the democratic process or any other way. Hence, they try to build their life off-grid and independent of the “Matrix.”

The Warriors

They have a clear idea of what is good and what is bad and they go on a crusade.

— The Pseudo-Warrior: They are very active on social media and use it to express their opinion and stands on all major political and societal issues. They are very active there and are followed by like-minded people. That activity leaves them with a sense of achievement although nothing changes in real life. Especially, because algorithms make sure that they are seen only by those who already believe in the same.

— The Idealist: They have a clear idea of what is good and what is bad and they go on a fight with the bad. They are committed and inspiring. The common case here is that by idealizing some version of the “good,” they exclude too many aspects of the whole. So, in the end, whatever they are fighting gets stronger, the more they fight it.

— The Rebel: This type has a very strong sense of justice and wants to fight for justice. They are often working from the fringes of society on a specific subject, challenging the status quo and fighting for justice using different means like writing, pressure groups, or by taking a position directly within politics.

— The Sage: They understand the systemic and the spiritual nature of the world. Such individuals are often seen as wise, grounded, and inspirational, capable of bridging the gap between the material and spiritual realms and fostering a deeper understanding of the meaning of things and our roles in the web of life.

I am sure that there are a lot more archetypes and I hope that you will add to the list. I also think that in different moments of our lives, we take on different roles. I definitely can recognize myself in several roles.

What unites all of these archetypes are our believes that the “more beautiful world”we long for, if possible at all, is an expression of individual actions.

Here are summaries of these mindsets as I see them today:

—The “things are happening to me” mindset (pessimistic version)
This “more beautiful world” is not possible and it won’t ever come.

—The “things are happening to me” mindset (optimistic version)
Someone (a great leader/ changemaker) will come and cause it to happen.

—The “things are happening by me” mindset
It’ll come if I work towards it and cause it: the changemaker/ leader.

— The “things are happening through me or as me” mindset
This world is created through how I show up in the world every day.

The Result is Collective Stupidity

In my article "What If We Get Some of It Wrong?," I spoke of Collective Intelligence and Collective Stupidity and here are the definitions I used:

Collective Intelligence means that the accumulated collective intelligence of a group of people is more than the total sum of people’s individual intelligence, and new ideas from the collective intelligence arise that could never arise individually.

Collective Stupidity means that the accumulated collective intelligence of a group of people is less than the total sum of people’s individual intelligence.

In my humble opinion, lately, the collective result has been Collective Stupidity, rather than Collective Intelligence. In other words, our collective results are smaller than the sum of our individual wisdom.

And the reason for that is largely driven by how we look at leadership, our overwhelm with all that’s going on, the consequent abdication from the the democratic processes alongside a lack of understanding of the role of the collective and of collective intelligence in general.

Choosing Positive Deviance Instead

Positive Deviance is the concept that in an organization or in society as a whole, somewhere within that group of people, there is already someone who has figured out the answers to the challenges which we face and which we hope leaders will solve. And these “someones” statistically would rarely be the leaders we look up to. Surprise, surprise…

Positive Deviance calls us to focus on identifying and learning from individuals or groups within a community who, despite having access to the same resources and facing similar challenges as their peers, somehow find successful and innovative solutions. These individuals or groups exhibit "deviant" behavior in a way that leads to achieving better outcomes than the norm.

Key aspects of Positive Deviance include:

• Community-Based: Solutions are identified and implemented within communities, leveraging local wisdom, specific cultural context and practices.

• Participatory & Generative: Instead of looking at what goes wrong, this approach aims to elicit collective intelligence and build hypotheses for the future.

• Inclusive of Outliers: It does not exclude those that are “out of the norm” but studies them by analyzing successful practices that work against the odds.

• Systemic Solutions: Because the solutions are homegrown, inclusive, and not externally imposed, they are more likely to be successful.

• No "immune response": Solutions stem from the community thus avoiding thus the usual "immune response" that occurs when solutions come from the outside.

So, allow me to dream for a bit…

It seems that the best solutions are not going to come from leaders or feisty changemakers.

We also saw that we put too much hope in the leaders and too little in our own abilities and the abilities of those that are not famous (or dead).

That leads to collective stupidity more often than to collective intelligence.

So, what if we reverse-engineer the process?

What if we focus on community engagements (onine and offline) which elicit the collective intelligence of the groups and give birth to novel solutions and visions?

What if we collectively rate these novel solutions and visions, and then we elect politicians who bid for the right to implement them?

So, instead of waiting for political leaders to come up with the vision, we elect the ones that are willing to represent us in implementing the visions we collectively create.

I know, I know…

“You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.”