The Group Flag

How can a common symbol liberate singularities? I propose here a reflection on the paradoxical role of the “group flag” function as guarantor of collective creativity.

The necessity of a rallying point

When I reflect on the necessary conditions for a group to truly foster cooperation and collective intelligence, I observe that a minimal form of coherence is essential. Without it, energies scatter, pull in all directions, and the result becomes sterile. This is where what I call the group’s “flag” comes in, what others would call its shared culture.

This notion became evident to me while observing groups of tourists in the crowded streets of certain cities or tourist sites. I noticed how the members of these groups, while being together, each remain deeply curious about their environment, attracted by the thousand and one details that capture their attention. They are never totally focused on simply following their group, and this is fortunate! Following the group rather constitutes a substrate, a reassuring base from which each person can cultivate their personal curiosity.

It is precisely this creative tension between belonging and exploration that makes their journey exciting. Edgar Morin defines this process well in The Method (1977):

“Living organization is both closure and openness. It is in the same movement that the being individualizes and integrates.”

This principle applies perfectly to group dynamics. The collective journey that makes room for singular desire then becomes a truly enriching experience for everyone. And if we generalize to human groups, the structure, the framework or “flag,” does not cancel freedoms; it makes them possible.

The liberating paradox of the common reference point

The physical flag, held high by the tourist guide, may certainly seem a bit ridiculous in its simplicity. However, I understood that it fulfills an essential function: it allows each person, even when distant, even after having taken personal detours, to very easily find their group and reconnect with it when they see fit. This assurance of never being lost paradoxically constitutes the very condition of their freedom to come and go. It is precisely the obvious simplicity of the flag that gives it power. It’s as if it tells each person: you belong to this group, even if you move away for a while. This certainty of a common refuge, this simple possibility of returning, establishes a freedom perhaps more anchored than pure autonomy, a relational freedom, supported by the security of the bond.

I readily acknowledge the somewhat paradoxical character of this process. How can a collective reference point constitute a guarantee for individuation? The key lies in its symbolic function: the flag is not a constraining code, but a convention of trust, an implicit pact. It represents what Pierre Lévy calls a “shared memory,” without which no meaningful co-construction is possible.

“To learn, innovate and create together, we must have a communication substrate: a language, concepts and shared knowledge on which singularities can be anchored. Without this base, we only speak through others.”

Collective Intelligence, Pierre Lévy, 1994.

This involves the legitimation of creative deviation within a stable common framework, where the collective and cultural reference point plays the role of a shared compass, which authorizes divergences, “departures from the path,” because we know where the path is. This dynamic can be named in different ways (constructive transgression, positive deviance, trust in meaning, etc.).

“It is not by repressing deviations that social order is built, but by integrating them into a framework where common sense remains alive. Deviation, to be meaningful, must be able to dialogue with the norm.”
Class Neurosis, Vincent de Gaulejac (1996).

This bond, this common support, is precisely nothing more than support, but what essential support! It offers the psychological security necessary for each person to dare to venture, explore, create. Without this common base, the anxiety of dispersion paralyzes individual initiative, which results in impoverishment for the collective.

The common canvas on which to embroider one’s singularity

A smooth fabric, without pattern, may seem banal, but it is precisely its neutrality that allows threads of multiple colors to interweave. The group flag, fundamentally, plays that role. It serves as a common backdrop, which each person can enrich with their own embroidery, their nuances, even their dissonances.

From this perspective, the group’s shared culture should not be conceived as rigid orthodoxy or a practice that must be mechanically repeated. It is more akin to what Donald Winnicott called a transitional space, a half-interior half-exterior framework, conducive to symbolic play, invention, co-creation:

“Play is an intermediate territory between the inner world and shared external reality, a place where the individual can use the security of the framework to experiment and create.”

Playing and Reality, Donald Winnicott (1971).

It is no coincidence that the most inventive groups are also those that know how to set the limits of a common space without confining its uses. In these groups, each person knows where they stand, and can therefore move within the framework without fear of exhausting or violating a norm.

What I observe in my professional practice is that creative collectives share a flexible discipline: firm enough to structure efforts, porous enough to welcome the unexpected. A culture that does not muffle the individual voice but offers it a microphone, a stage, a benevolent audience—this is what the group flag makes possible.

I regularly observe in my professional practice that the most creative groups are not those that reject all structure, but those that have been able to define a minimal and clear framework allowing each person to find themselves when they have strayed, and to enrich the collective with their deviations. This is also a matter of psychological security in the collective. We can say that unity is not uniformity. Unity is the bond that allows diversity. It is precisely because a collective shares common reference points, a vision or purpose, that each person can express their singularity without fearing exclusion or rejection. True unity does not constrain, it connects. It establishes the conditions for a climate of trust, mutual recognition, and offers each person the inner security necessary to take risks, dare to propose, contest or innovate. The richness of the group then depends less on its apparent cohesion than on its capacity to welcome within itself the plurality of voices, talents and experiences. A living community is an open unity.

Cultivating dynamic balance

The major challenge posed by any collective effort is that of balance. Too much structure sterilizes, too much freedom disperses. A fixed point is needed for dynamics to circulate. The fundamental paradox of collective intelligence is there: it is the common reference point, which I call here flag, that allows differences to be liberated.

This flag is not a war flag, nor an ideological banner, it is a metaphor for any form of shared reference point, which plays a silent but decisive role in human collaboration processes. It does not gather to constrain but to open, to provide each person with that feeling of legitimacy: “I am part of this group, but I can remain myself in it.”

Psychological security is the essential lever of collective creativity, and this security is born from the perceived coherence of the group, from the clarity of its orientation, from the quiet strength of its symbols.

Thus, I share this conviction: a truly living group flees neither structure nor conflict. It patiently builds a common fabric, a shared language, a collective imagination. It raises a simple but evocative flag, not to uniformize, but so that voices, ideas and experiences can freely embed themselves in it.

Collective intelligence is not the forgetting of self for the benefit of the group, but the living weaving of the common and the singular. The responsibility of people who have power in the group is therefore to guarantee this fabric/weaving. To summarize, we must create a common reference point solid enough to liberate creative energies. It is in this fertile tension between the common and the singular that collective intelligence is truly born, the kind that transforms a simple gathering of individuals into a group capable of creating together what none could have imagined alone.