Originally posted on 04/17/2020:

A bit off the subject, but I found fascinating many years ago while I was in an IBM management class. We were given the following exercise.

“NASA Exercise: Survival on the MoonScenario: You are a member of a space crew originally scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship on the lighted surface of the moon. However, due to mechanical difficulties, your ship was forced to land at a spot some 200 miles from the rendezvous point. During reentry and landing, much of the equipment aboard was damaged and, since survival depends on reaching the mother ship, the most critical items available must be chosen for the 200-mile trip. Below are listed the 15 items left intact and undamaged after landing. Your task is to rank order them in terms of their importance for your crew in allowing them to reach the rendezvous point. Place the number 1 by the most important item, the number 2 by the second most important, and so on through number 15 for the least important.”

Then we randomly divided in groups of 5 and asked to repeat using a group consensus approach (wisdom of the crowd). Needless to say, I found some of the suggestions good and others not. But, we hammered out a list. Then we were given a scoring sheet and we computed our individual score and the team score. I was surprised that the team score was better than mine. The instructor then asked for a show of hands of those who had a better individual score than the team. No one in the class of 30 raised their hand. He said no one rarely does.

Here is a link to the quiz (1st page), the correct answers (2nd page), and the scoring method (3rd page).

https://www.humber.ca/centreforteach...onExercise.pdf

I learned a valuable lesson that day.