Critique: Wisdom of the Team

There is a model in information science referred to as DIKW, which stands for Data – Information – Knowledge – Wisdom. It’s a hierarchy that builds upon itself, often represented as a pyramid with data on the bottom. Data are sensory stimuli—signals and symbols—that are meaningless until presented in a relevant form. Data are the building blocks of information, which could be defined as “useful data.” Information is meaningful. You can base decisions on it. Knowledge, then, is the internalization of information. Knowledge is formed when a person combines multiple pieces of information with context and practical experience resulting in action. In short, you know how to do something.

That brings us to wisdom. Wisdom is what you have when you can draw on the knowledge from past experiences and use it to make decisions in new situations.

You can then see that each link in the DIKW chain is an accumulation of the previous links. Multiple pieces of data are collected to create information. Multiple pieces of information are joined to form knowledge, and multiple pieces of knowledge congeal into wisdom. The more knowledge you have, the more likely that wisdom will result. It stands to reason, then, that a group of people will have more knowledge than any one person. A team will have more varied experiences than any one team member. Thus, wisdom is more likely to accrue from a team than any one team member.

A critique allows a team to draw on that shared pool of knowledge and experience, mix it together, and then make decisions. Depend on the wisdom of the team to make decisions, rather than your own (or the boss’s) comparatively limited experience.