Collaboration is a Crooked Line

On more than a few occasions when I’ve encouraged students or clients to collaborate, I’ve riffed on the idiom “two heads are better than one” by counting the people in the room and saying, “(n) heads are better than one.”

But are they? 

According to a study published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, “When ants work in groups, their performances rise significantly. Groups of people do not show such improvement and, when their communication is restricted, even display deteriorated performances.”

The saying “two heads are better than one” was first recorded as a proverb in John Heywood’s 1546 suspenseful nailbiter collection entitled, A Dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe tongue: “Some heades haue taken two headis better then one.” A similar “two is better than one” sentiment can be found in the Bible (Ecclesiastes 4:9, for example, because that’s fun).

Management consultants and teachers who assign group projects have been quoting the idea ever since. Many of us have also been wondering how presumably bright people can get together and make such dumb decisions. 

As an undergraduate at UCLA I was fortunate to learn from Professor Paul Rosenthal, who taped (on analog VHS and Betamax, kids!) decades’ worth of TV news and public affairs programming and created a catalogue that became the UCLA Communication Archive. Professor Rosenthal helped an entire generation of communications theorists understand how television changed everything from public policy to presidential elections. I took several courses with Professor Rosenthal, including Persuasive Communication, in which he spent a very memorable few weeks on groupthink.

We want to believe that leaders assemble teams of experts to advise on making good decisions. But it’s important to remember that decisions are informed not only by intellect, but by emotions and basic human needs – and leaders are people too. The people who failed to anticipate Pearl Harbor and the people who responded poorly to the Bay of Pigs were smart and experienced individuals. However, their desire for belonging and approval led them to sacrifice critical thinking for amiability. Watergate, the scandal that led Professor Rosenthal to start recording news programming in the early 1970s, wouldn’t have happened if Nixon’s advisors hadn’t been blinded by loyalty and allowed to operate in secret isolation from critics in closed-door meetings where they came to believe they were invulnerable.

A decade before William Whyte borrowed the term “groupthink” from George Orwell’s 1984 and used it to describe how corporations create ass-kissing cults of failure in a 1952 Fortune Magazine article, a Lutheran pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested, imprisoned, and eventually hanged by the Nazis because of his failure to go along with the genocidal crowd.

In a letter he wrote from prison, Bonhoeffer reflected on how Germany had evolved from a country known for its philosophers, inventors, industrialists and composers to a country led and defined by hateful cowards and crooks. Bonhoeffer saw it this way:

“The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what “the people” really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity. But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from peoples’ stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.” 

Bonhoeffer could have written this last week. In today’s world, many people prioritize their belonging to a group through loyalty – to a team, a religion, a political party, an employer, or a brand – and spout talking points and slogans instead of thinking for themselves, even when it means fighting or severing ties with friends and family. There is no reasoning with stupidity. So rather than trying to fix other people, this is a good time to make sure we’re tending our own thinking gardens. If we avoid the traps of stupidity, and focus on critical and creative thinking instead of tribal affiliations and reactionary clapbacks, not only will we continue living our best lives but we will still be available for a restorative dialogue whenever our loved ones and fellow citizens experience an inner liberation and return to their senses.

Ants have the luxury of creating emergent collective memory (an intelligence greater than the sum of its parts) just by doing stuff together. We humans, on the other hand, have to keep our minds free and clear so that we can exchange ideas with each other (as in talking, but also listening, and actively reflecting/considering/weighing in between) instead of being mindlessly persuaded just to maintain friendly bonds or self-esteem. We need to think critically as individuals so that when we work together we can argue and reason in ways that bring the best solutions to the surface. We have a responsibility to do more than follow the herd, even/especially when someone is giving orders.

Our thinking about two heads versus one has been incomplete all along. For nearly 500 years we’ve only been quoting half an idea. It turns out that two lines are also better than one. 

Here is the entire quote from John Heywood’s aforementioned and very sexy 1546 collection of proverbs:

Some heades haue taken two headis better then one.

But ten heads without wit, I wene as good none. 

What’s your experience in working with groups and teams? Drop me a line, I’m curious.

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m reading, watching, and thinking about.

Almost every novel is a creature of its age, and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is no exception – it would be hard to justify its portrayals of gender and underage sex in today’s culture. At the same time, the magical realism remains transcendent and the allegory of Columbia’s history as told through seven generations of the Buendía family has become part of the Latin American canon. I read the book a long time ago and I was curious to see how TV would tell the story. From Variety: “Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez‘s 1967 magnum opus, “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” has long been considered one of the greatest works of modern literature. However, during Márquez’s life, he refused to sell the rights to the novel because he felt a film adaptation would not come close to scratching the surface of this century-long tale. Now, with the blessing of his sons Rodrigo García and Gonzalo García Barcha, who serve as executive producers, Netflix has adapted the sweeping masterwork into a two-part limited series spanning over 16 hours of television. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is exquisitely detailed and layered in intricate symbolism. The show is one of the most faithful page-to-screen adaptations in recent years.” 

I am not chromosomally qualified to say for sure whether writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” is a feminist commentary about ageism and sexism in Hollywood, or a voyeuristic, splashy, squishy spectacle of female body parts and gore. I can tell you that I enjoyed both its style and substance. My favorite part was listening to the observations of the very insightful woman who watched it with me. (P.S. Demi Moore won her first Golden Globe for the role.)

If you’ve read this far, and you’re willing to help me test the theory that a couple thousand heads are better than one when it comes to technology purchasing decisions, especially when I can’t read more than two product descriptions without getting bored…

Dear readers, does anyone have a suggestion for an iPhone tripod/stand setup? I’m looking for horizontal stability and face/full body capture for social media video.

If you have any suggestions please hit “reply” to this email and let me know. Thanks :)

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

– Albert Einstein

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

– Frank Zappa

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

– Michel de Montaigne

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David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: “Images from the Collective Unconscious” via Public Domain Review