Wise Crowds
Wise Crowds is a peer-consulting format where one person presents a real challenge and a small group offers clarifying questions, advice, and practical next steps.
How to run it
- Each person requesting a consult (the client) gets fifteen minutes broken down as follows:
- The client presents the challenge and request for help. 2 min.
- The consultants ask the client clarifying questions. 3 min.
- The client turns his or her back to the consultants and gets ready to take notes
- The client provides feedback to the consultants: what was useful and what he or she takes away. 2 min.
- Generate results that are enduring because each individual and the group produced them together without “outside expertise”
- Refine skills in giving, receiving, and asking for help
- All methods All authors IAF Library Library Wise Crowds 220 188 Wise Crowds make it possible to instantly engage a small or large group of people in helping one another.
- You can set up a Wise Crowds consultation with one small group of four or five people or with many small groups simultaneously or, during a larger gathering, with a group as big as one hundred or more people.
Run this exercise live
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What participants need now
Materials:
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Prompts to use +
Each person requesting a consult (the client) gets fifteen minutes broken down as follows:
The consultants ask the client clarifying questions. 3 min.
The client turns his or her back to the consultants and gets ready to take notes
You can set up a Wise Crowds consultation with one small group of four or five people or with many small groups simultaneously or, during a larger gathering, with a group as big as one hundred or more people.
Run this with your AI assistant +
Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or your own local model: paste this prompt and your AI will co-facilitate this exercise with you.
Adapt this exercise for my exact room. Exercise: Wise Crowds. Readiness: Publishable Draft. Core moves: Each person requesting a consult (the client) gets fifteen minutes broken down as follows:; The consultants ask the client clarifying questions. 3 min.; The client turns his or her back to the consultants and gets ready to take notes; You can set up a Wise Crowds consultation with one small group of four or five people or with many small groups simultaneously or, during a larger gathering, with a group as big as one hundred or more people.. Return a concise facilitator script with timing, wording, safety notes, and remote/in-person adjustments.
Origin unverified
- Where we observed it: The strongest current observations come from Liberating Structures; aggregators are listed as additional observations, not origin proof. (2 sources observed, including Liberating Structures, SessionLab.)
- What that means: we track where an exercise has been observed in public sources. We do not claim to know who created it, or how popular it is.
- No efficacy claims: appearing in this library is not a claim that the exercise is proven effective. Facilitator judgment and context decide whether it works for a given room.
- Method lineage: this exercise shares its method name with work attributed to James Surowiecki in our people index. That is a name match, not an origin claim.
- Corrections: if you have evidence of an earlier or more accurate source, read our methodology and trust boundary and tell us.