Sorry if those were unclear. I described them later in the post (using the “tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tell ‘em, then tell ‘em what you told ‘em” approach”)

Seeing the problem in the context of the whole is exactly about knowing where your supposed to be going, from a “systems thinking” perspective, as in seeing the forest for the trees. Look at the problem in the context of the whole business-value stream, otherwise we risk responding to “local” events in a way that might appear to optimize the local issue, but suboptimizes the end-goal of delivering business value (where we are going).

If we don’t “see the problem” from the perspective of the whole systems and its goal, then you are far less likely to respond in a way that moves you in the right direction to where you need to be going.

“Swarm the solution” uses the term “swarm” in the sense of “swarm behavior” or “swarm intelligence”. It is a particular style of close collaboration based on so called “self-organization”

The rest of your posting that talks about self-organization and how it can be taken too far is actually the subject of one of my next blog-entries for my “What is Agility?” series and also touches an important difference between Agile values (as stated in the Manifesto) versus Lean Thinking.

I think that for most Agilistas Self Organizing doesn’t excuse leadership from guiding/leading the team. That is the team doesn’t define what needs to be accomplished but rather how they will accomplish it.