20 an embodiment of the present invention proceeds as follows one of nodes 10 is selected as a leader node to start the process the leader node processes its local observations along with those from at least one other of nodes 10 to determine an appropriate response action the response action is implemented at the leader node and data indicative of the response action is transferred to the remaining nodes 10 within local community 20 the current leader node 39 s response action is fixed or frozen at the response action so determined and thereafter excluded from further current cycle processing while the remaining ones of nodes 10 implement the response action node leadership is then relinquished to another one of nodes 10 where it will assume the above described leader 39 s duties to iii transfer data indicative of the response action to remaining ones of nodes 10 that are not or have not been a leader and iv relinquish node leadership to another node that has not been a leader the above described process continues for all of nodes 10 within local community boundary 20 the entire process cycle is repeated whenever conditions change such that new responses actions are warranted the order of node leadership designations can be the same or different than that used in the previous process cycle without departing from the scope of the present invention a specific application of the present invention will be explained for adaptive noise reduction.