Write the Rules, Not the Guest List

In 1727 I gathered most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club for mutual improvement. We called it the Junto and we met on Friday evenings. It ran in one form or another for forty years, and very nearly everything I built in Philadelphia began in that room.

I did not assemble remarkable men, because I had none available. I had a glazier, a surveyor, a shoemaker, a clerk and some printers. What I did instead was write the rules. Every member, in his turn, had to bring one or more queries on Morals, Politics or Natural Philosophy for the company to discuss.

And once in three months each of us had to produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. That is the requirement people drop when they copy the idea. A conversation club produces conversation. An essay every quarter produces work that still exists after the evening ends.

The strictest rule governed how we argued. Debates were to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory. All expressions of positiveness in opinion, and all direct contradiction, were forbidden outright, and we fined the man who used them.

If you want a room like that, do not start by recruiting impressive people. Start by writing the rules. A fixed night, a question everybody owes, something written every quarter, and a standing ban on winning. Ordinary men under good rules will outproduce brilliant men under none.