One of the decision making tools we teach in the Art of Hosting is called “Council.” In it’s essence it is a way of making a decision collectively which uses dialogue and conversation to get to a point where the decision is fully supported and meets the needs of the group. This kind of process can take a lot of time, but the quality of the decision is incredible. It leads to sustainable action, solid relationships and wisdom.
There are a couple of other things required for making council a good process. First you need mates, people with whom you can work with and deeply trust to contribute to the work, and secondly you need to let go of individual agendas and trust that the wisdom and capacity of the group will produce a more wise, more sustainable and more effective decision. This is not “groupthink” or even “management by committee.” It is rather a much deeper way of making a decision and executing action. You can probably think of the times in your life when you have done this – we all have. Think about times when, with a few others, you seemed to simply know what to do and the result was an amazing and unexpected time.
It turns out that we may be deeply wired to do this. Some recent research by biologist Bonnie Bassler has shown that bacteria converse with one another before collectively taking a decision to act:
“This is how this whole field started,” she says. “You’re looking at this bacterium, which is a marine bacterium.”
It turns out that when one of these bacteria is all alone, it doesn’t glow. After all, that would be a waste of effort because nothing could ever see such a tiny amount of light. But it does send out chemical signals that say, hey I’m here … and it listens back for other bacteria sending the same signal.
When enough bacteria are doing this, they know they have a quorum. All of a sudden, they light up and do all sorts of other things to act in concert, like a super-organism.
It’s always interesting to read of these kinds of things. It turns out that mushrooms may operate in the same way too, as do corals and ant and bee colonies. It seems a deeper pattern of life on earth that we wait until we have mates around us to really hum.
THanks to Johnnie for the link
[tags]bonnie bassler, council, art of hosting, decision making, bacteria[/tags]
