Over the past few months I have been referencing, off and on, a book I have been reading called The Wisdom of Crowds.  I finished it….finally…last week.  This was one of the more thought provoking books I have read in the past year and I would recommend picking up a copy as you think through your leadership of teams, staff settings, and congregational polity.

The basic premise of the book is that crowds….large groups of people…can, under the right circumstances, make better decisions then small groups of experts.

Among the more interesting and thought provoking ideas espoused:

  • Large groups of ignorant people can almost always, if you aggregate their answers, come up with better answers than any one person….unless you give them to much information! 
  • People who have choice over their work environment can work up to five times more effectively, even if they make no choices to change that enviorment!
  • Trying to find smart people to solve a problem is a good idea but trying to find the smartest will almost always lead you astray.

There are also some great experiments and stories that will make terrific sermon illustrations.


  • A classic Stanley Milligram experiment where the more people standing on a street corner looking up, the more people who stopped to look up with them.
  • A time when the researchers decided to give apes different rewards for performing a simple task and the sour reactions that ensued when the rewards were unequal.
  • How greed causes a person to turn down free money if they assume the arrangement is unfair.
  • A couple of powerful examples of how valuing consensus over dialog had costly consequences.

As pastors we are, in a sense, in the people business.  This book is a must read on how people function in groups.  Check it out.