The Dragon Reborn - Chapter 25 [#100Days, Day 93]

None Of Us Is As Smart As All Of Us

    Elayne, Egwene and Nynaeve are now fully engaged in their hunt for the Black Ajah.  Currently, their efforts are focused on a couple of documents given to them by Verin: a list of those who left with Liandrin and a list of what they stole.  Hardly a tremendous start, but better than nothing at all.

    Nynaeve came to a halt staring down at Elayne.  "Put those away.  We have been over them twenty times, and there isn't a word that helps.  Verin gave us rubbish.  The question is, was it all she had, or did she give us rubbish on purpose?"

Nynaeve, The Dragon Reborn, p. 235

    "It tells us it is all too neat," Elayne said calmly.  "What chance that thirteen women chosen solely because they were Darkfriends would be so neatly arrayed across age, across nations, across Ajahs?  Shouldn't there be perhaps three Reds, or four born in Cairhien, or just two the same age, if it was all chance?  They had women to choose from or they could not have chosen so random a pattern.  There are still Black Ajah in the Tower, or elsewhere we don't know about.  It must mean that."

Elayne, The Dragon Reborn, p. 236

    The women somewhat stumble upon the benefit of working as a team: expanded points of view leading to multiple theories and avenues to attack the problem.  A large part of that comes from the trust they share.  Unlike a high school lab project, where, inevitably, only one person does the work carrying everyone; a team that trusts each member allows them to spin off and look at the problem from their own view and experience.  This provides, presumably, a multitude of options from which to choose to best solve the issue.  The voice of new team members cannot be discounted.  Being brand new to the team, they lack the institutional biases and pre-conceived notions that can skew the views of other team members.  This happened to me on my walk home today.  I was talking with one of my brand new direct reports, he's been on the team for less than a week, and he was describing an idea he had discussed with one of our other team members about how to soften the blow of moving people's workspace to other areas.  The rest of us, myself included, were so caught up in the details of how to execute the move that we didn't see the "obvious" benefit about advertising it to the local human resources office to stem the flood of complaints.  A relatively simple and easy thing to accomplish, with potentially high impact results; and we almost missed it.