The good, bad and ugly of #cocreation: can leaders tap the true wisdom of crowds?

Organisational change the world over is littered with the wreckage of failed transformations - typically strategies imposed from above, consultants prescribing ‘best practice’ from afar, leaders expecting compliance rather than commitment. These failures have left many organisations traumatised, sceptical of yet another grand plan or ‘bold vision’ handed down from on high. And yet, my instincts tell me the imperative for change has never been greater. There are countless organisations in which people need to reimagine how they work, fix broken cultures, or create bold strategies that endure.

To achieve significant change, I've long argued that we must shift from a model of technocratic or ‘top down’ leadership to one rooted in co-creation. Please don’t get me wrong, this is not about abdicating leadership responsibilities or appeasing people. It is about recognising that the intelligence, energy, and lived experience of the people within and around an organisation is its greatest untapped resource. It is about recognising organisations, full of these messy beings called humans, evolve more like complex adaptive systems than predictable machines.

However, as I will make clear in this short essay, co-creation is neither a silver bullet nor an easy process. It is not a replacement for leadership, nor is it a guarantee of better decisions. It is, at best, a mechanism for achieving more grounded, informed, and widely supported change, but only when done well.

The four voices of collective wisdom

To truly harness the wisdom of crowds, we need more than just a broad participation process. I’ve learnt the hard way that we need to be deliberate in ensuring that different types of knowledge and influence are brought together in ways that lead to meaningful and actionable insights. This means recognising and balancing the following four groups of voices:

1. People with power and passion: the voice of intent grounded in humanity

Attempts to build new insight into wicked issues or to influence the future are futile without the people who have the power, mandate and passion to drive change. As uncomfortable as this might sound for some people who feel powerless, at present, we need people who have their hands on the levers of change at the table. The best leaders know this and see that their leadership, when done well, is about enabling action, shaping not dictating direction. Those with positional authority when both humble enough to listen and brave enough to act when collective wisdom emerges, will be the most successful leaders of the future. However, power dynamics must be acknowledged and managed in co-creation efforts. We are not seeking to dissolve leadership here, this is about making it more informed, inclusive, effective and human.

2. People with lived experience – the voice of reason grounded in reality

Lived experience is often the missing piece in leadership decision-making. Whether it’s frontline workers, residents, customers, or people who service, their insights expose the realities of what works, what doesn’t, and what needs to change. If leaders fail to engage with these voices, they will forever be managing symptoms rather than addressing root causes. However, lived experience alone is not enough. The raw experience of “frontline” reality needs to be synthesised rather than treated as an unfiltered stream of precise demands or exact complaints. And this needs to be achieved with grace and permission with those sharing their voice, not done to them. Deep empathy and listening with fascination is key, safe spaces to explore and test assumptions are essential.

3. People with specialist knowledge – the voice of capability grounded in context

Expertise and technical knowledge are vital, and when in service of real-world needs surfaced through lived experience they are at their best. Specialists, data scientists, and domain experts must be embedded within deliberative processes, ensuring that technical solutions remain connected to human reality. Expertise should not be wielded as an elite form of authority that silences dissent, nor should it be blindly rejected in favour of populist sentiment. The challenge is in making expertise participatory - ensuring specialists contribute with people, not to them.

4. People who can facilitate – the voice of design grounded in empathy

Great co-creation does not happen by accident. It requires facilitation, brokering, and the ability to weave diverse voices into something meaningful. This is the art of creating psychologically safe spaces where people can truly listen, empathise and dare to imagine a different future. Yet, facilitation itself is not neutral - who controls the process often shapes the outcomes. If co-creation is poorly designed, it can become either an unstructured talking shop or a performative exercise that merely validates pre-existing decisions. The best facilitators will be those and craft the conditions for co-creation of the people involved in the process.

Co-creation is not easy – but it is essential

The messy, gritty nature of co-creation when done well is precisely why it works. When people are engaged in shaping the future, their buy-in is intrinsic. The solution is not something they are asked to accept, it is something they helped create. And when leaders act with the wisdom of the crowd, they make better, more resilient decisions. However, this is not an automatic outcome. Co-creation can easily become theatre - a process in which people are consulted but not truly heard. Too often “engagement” is used as a box-ticking exercise rather than a genuine effort to distribute influence and share power. And to be clear, I have even been involved in beautifully designed and initiated co-creation projects in which leaders have suddenly panicked, pulled the plug and flipped the process back into something that feels safer to them. It's heartbreaking stuff.

So, let’s get clear on some potentially uncomfortable truths:

? Co-creation is not a synonym for consensus.

? It is neither practical nor desirable for every voice to carry equal weight in all decisions.

? Some decisions must be made quickly, with limited deliberation, particularly in moments of crisis or when testing hypotheses to navigating complexity.

The role of leadership is to join the space for deliberation, to take a stand for inclusivity, ensuring voices are heard, and then to act decisively, with clarity and courage. Co-creation should inform and guide leadership, not paralyse it.

So, what are the risks of co-creation?

For all its advantages, co-creation is vulnerable to several pitfalls. If leaders and communities are serious about tapping into the wisdom of crowds, they must actively guard against many risks. Here are some of the top ones to consider:

The danger of groupthink. Just because a majority agrees does not mean they are correct. Effective co-creation requires the safe spaces and tools to enable critical challenge, diversity of thought, constructive dissent and the ability to analyse and present the insights captured to really interrogate divergence and convergence of opinion.

Representation gaps. Who is not in the room? If co-creation exercises privilege certain voices over others, they can reinforce rather than dismantle inequities.

Slow decision-making. Not all decisions can or should be subjected to extended deliberation. Leaders must be clear about what is up for co-creation and what is not.

Performative engagement. If co-creation is used as a way to manufacture the illusion of inclusivity while decisions are already made elsewhere, it will breed cynicism and disengagement.

Disconnected engagement. We must complete the loop. If co-creation and deliberation are used to generate real insight and intelligence, then these outcomes must be connected to mechanisms of real change - the people involved need to be able to see how their voice has had real influence.

The solution is not to abandon co-creation but to design it with rigour. Leaders embracing co-creation must be explicit about why they are engaging people, how different voices will be used, and what will be done with the insights gained. Then they must complete the loop and report on impact.

Technology as an enabler (but not a replacement for leadership)

We’ve all seen technology used to impose control, to monitor and measure, rather than to empower and include. It’s often why people wince when new technologies are introduced to organisations – it’s about control not enablement. This said, technology can create the conditions for real co-creation at scale.

Good, purposefully designed digital platforms can widen participation, making it easier to capture diverse perspectives and analyse collective insights in meaningful ways. However, there are risks. When building or buying tools for digital deliberation you must make sure you don’t accidentally strip away nuance, introduce more blockers to psychological safety, exclude those who are less comfortable with online engagement or flatten discussions into surface-level exchanges rather than deep dialogue.

The design of these platforms matters. So, here’s a quick shout-out for leadership tech like Clever Together’s #SafeSpaces. It’s built specifically to help executive teams listen with intent, gather evidence, and make informed decisions based on lived experience. These platforms are not a substitute for leadership but a bridge to a more grounded, inclusive form of leadership. A leadership we all need, one that sees beyond the usual echo chambers of the boardroom, past sanitised insights from “on message” senior manager, a leadership that taps into collective intelligence.

The future of leadership: asking better questions, not just giving more answers

For leaders willing to embrace it, I believe the future is a world in which their organisations are driven lots less by familiar patterns of hierarchy and lots more with agility from fluid, collective intelligence. A collective intelligence they can tap to create their course and to course correct with their people.

In this emerging world leadership is not about having all the answers. It’s about asking the right questions, and not to the select few, asking the many. When they are truly heard, they carry the wisdom we so desperately need.

My experience is that this shift requires bravery. It demands that leaders relinquish the illusion of control and embrace the reality that the complex systems they lead are by nature unpredictable but can be better guided through co-creation. It asks leaders to trust that the best ideas will not always come from the top, nor from the experts, and that the hardest truths are often spoken by those who have historically been ignored.

A last thought for you: co-creation is not a trend. It is not a nice-to-have. It is now an imperative. Those who fail to embrace it will find themselves not just out of touch, but ultimately out of time.