I went on this amazing canoe trip when I was in college, 21 people, 7 boats, 6 weeks, 1100 miles across the Canadian Wilderness. Wherever we camped, we were the biggest town for at least 500 miles. We were out there.

One day we were crossing a lake studded with islands. It was kind of confusing and our leader, Jay, seemed to have his head sideways. He kept going about 20 degrees off course and couldn't figure out where he was, or synch anything around us up with the map. For some reason, that day at least, I understood the surroundings and knew what was right and how he was going wrong. Jay was not the type to listen. So we just kept going the wrong way. I pondered what to do. I realized (flash of insight) that if one or two boats acted on what was right, we'd split up. And 2 boats that were right, over here, and 5 boats that were wrong, over there, was much worse than 7 wrong boats all together.

I've thought about this a lot since then, because situations keep reminding me of it. The moral is that cohesion is so important, that something had better be very very wrong before you split up over it.

I said Jay was not the listening type. When you are the most experienced person, and 21 lives rest on you, it actually is best not to listen very much. He wasn't there so much to explain to, give dignity to, or validate us- he was there to keep us alive. That's hard to do by committee.