A Committee of Murderers
If you ask 100 people to guess how far we are from the North Pole, and take the average, you’ll get surprisingly close to the right answer. Almost definitely closer than you would’ve on your own. Unless, of course, you’re a Geoguessr fiend.
This phenomenon is known as the ‘Wisdom of the crowd’ and it’s been replicated again and again in research. So, when refining creative work, should we seek the widest possible range of feedback? Can we harness this wisdom to our advantage?
Well, it depends. In theory yes. A diverse and wide range of feedback should get you a really accurate read on how the work is going to be received. But there are two golden rules to keep in mind:
Once people start discussing, influencing, and bandwagoning each other, the result is compromised.
The magic of the method is that the fringe opinions cancel each other out. Some people massively over-estimate, some massively under-estimate. None of those people matter in the final judgement provided you take responsibility for taking the final average.
These two simple rules separate the ‘Wisdom of the crowd’ from its infamous in-law ‘Death by Committee’. In the latter, ideas fail because each and every individual piece of feedback is addressed. Aiming to appease, we slowly tinker our ideas into an unrecognisable, Frankensteinian mess.
But with the ‘Wisdom of the crowd’ we happily allow the extremes to cancel each other out. We accept that some people love things a little too much, and some people hate things a little too much. We let the details go. And instead we focus our attention on the overall gist of the feedback. The patterns and recurring themes. The overlaps where multiple people raise the same issue or opportunity.
Of course, you might find a little piece of brilliance out in the fringes – some new insight that fuels a bigger, better idea. But you should never feel beholden to address every piece of feedback, or to please everyone. Because it’s just not possible.
Trust in your own judgement and vision. And never turn a wise crowd into a committee of murderers.
StudioLR is the creative agency that believes in guts. We’ve been grabbing people’s insides and making them interesting since 2004. If you liked this blog, you might like this one about how the truth comes with ugly bits.