Collective Intelligence: Gift or Guff?

Ever wondered why some transformation teams fly and others flounder? In this week's issue of the Tackling Transformation Series, we explore a very new and exciting concept for delivering more successful outcomes. Collective Intelligence is a fast-emerging area of scientific study that's recently been supercharged by the growing maturity of AI technologies. 

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Context

Ah, school days. The best days of your life, they say. Well, not if you had to endure the Monday morning mid-winter PE lessons from hell. Picture this: you’re standing on a waterlogged, grass-stripped excuse for a pitch, facing into a force 9 gale and waiting for that week's match to begin. You know the drill. The sort of conditions that made you wish you were stranded on a desert island eating locust with Bear Grills instead. No? Well, maybe then you’ve also blocked out the trauma of the pre-game picking ritual, where the teacher’s two favourites got to choose their teams from the rest of us socially and or skill impaired losers. Talk about a self-esteem killer. If you can think of a more cruel and unfair way of making selection decisions (other than internal promotion decisions at work, of course), I’m all ears.

But let’s get back to the game for a moment, and what usually happened next. Instead of having two evenly matched teams based on individual talent, we ended up with the PE version of Real Madrid versus Shrewsbury Town. But hold on, think harder. Do you also remember how, every now and then, the team of misfits would pull off a miraculous win and wipe the smug grins off the faces of the mini Olympians. Yeah, that was awesome. On those days, the school lunch tasted like a banquet fit for kings. But how did they do it? Was it just luck?

And this paradigm prevails today. I call it the power of collectivism. In fact, it underpins one of the latest concepts for building winning transformation teams. It is the notion that a group that thinks, operates and learns as a collective will outperform a team of perceived talented individuals. It is certainly not luck.

Whether it is a colony of ants, or a bunch of people cajoled into joining a business transformation programme, this notion that some groups somehow manage to transcend the limits of personal capability to outperform all expectations as a collective has attracted scientific scrutiny.

One of the pioneers of CI research is Anita Woolley, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She and her colleagues developed a way to measure the collective intelligence of groups, which they found to be predictive of their future performance across different tasks. They also identified some factors that influence CI, such as the diversity of skills, the social sensitivity of members, and the gender composition of groups. 

So, we’ve all heard the mantra that if you want a successful programme then make sure you get the A team, but is this no longer about finding the biggest brains in the room. Is it actually about moulding your team of B listers into a group that have a higher Collective Intelligence than their naturally more IQ gifted A star colleagues?

Buzzword: Collective Intelligence

Despite the growing evidence of Collective Intelligence (CI), it has not entered the mainstream of management thinking yet. One possible reason is that CI challenges some of the traditional assumptions and practices of management, such as the role of hierarchy, authority, and individual incentives. CI also requires a shift in mindset from focusing on individual performance to fostering collaboration and learning among diverse and distributed contributors. Moreover, CI is not a static property of groups, but a dynamic and emergent one that depends on the context, the task, and the interaction among members.

Despite these challenges, collective intelligence could offer hope to organisations with a knack for presiding over failing transformations. If collective intelligence could be developed then the hypothesis is it will enable programmes to reliably tap into the collective wisdom and creativity of all stakeholders to generate novel insights and solutions, make better decisions, complete actions more effectively, and to learn and adapt. So, let’s explore then, using our now familiar Gift/Guff framework to understand how the concept of Collective Intelligence is interpreted, how it is applied and whether it delivers what it promises. Let’s kick off.

What is it?

Collective intelligence (CI) is the ability of a group or a team to perform a wide variety of tasks and solve diverse problems. The term was coined by Pierre Lévy in 1994, who defined it as “a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilization of skills”. The emergent field of CI has been studied by researchers from different disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, computer science and management and has dedicated faculties in erstwhile institutions such as MIT and NESTA.

Central to the concept of CI is the interoperable nature of human, and now ofcourse AI capabilities, within an environment that’s primed to cultivate certain behaviours. These climate factors include:

• Focus on skills and capability
• Development and recognition for curiosity
• Facilitation of active networks
• Engagement across cognitively diverse groups
• Harnessing cognition and importance of consensus

Where these conditions and factors prevail then the broad collective will consistently outperform the narrow individual specialists over a range of tasks – like the range of work performed in a transformation.

Gift or Guff?

Gift

• Spice up the mix: Having a variety of skills and perspectives in a group can boost its creativity and problem-solving abilities. A diverse team generates more ideas, reduces groupthink, and complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses as long though as it is tightly connected. Sparsely connected groups with high diversity fair less well.
• Glue of social sensitivity: Being able to read and respond to the emotions and needs of others can enhance the communication and collaboration within a group. A socially sensitive team builds trust, empathy, and rapport among its members, and avoid conflicts and misunderstandings.
• Women rule: Having more women in a group is shown to enhance its collective intelligence. Women on average score higher on social awareness, which is one of the key factors of CI. They also tend to encourage more participation and equality in group discussions.
• Collaboration on a different level: Having a good structure and process for group work improves its efficiency and effectiveness. A well-organised team can set clear goals, roles, and norms, and coordinate its actions and resources. It can also monitor its progress and learn from feedback. Group interaction is the engine of collective intelligence!
• Modulate speeds of thinking: Think of the concept of fast and slow thinking and you’ve grasped how it applies to CI. Groups with high CI quotient instinctively know when to move from faster to slower thinking.

Guff

• Crowd size matters: Having an exceptionally large number of participants in a team can increase its diversity and richness of knowledge. However, it can also introduce noise, redundancy and inconsistency. A bigger network is not alwaysa better network, especially if the quality and reliability of the information is not controlled or verified. With CI ‘not too big’ is just right.
• Feedback loops are key to collaboration: Having a transparent and psychologically safe mechanism for providing feedback to the participants of a collective intelligence system can enhance their motivation and learning for sure. However, without out exceptional management, tooling (not MS Teams or a SharePoint Site) and leadership involvement it can also promote biases, create distortions and knee-jerk reactions. Poorly facilitated feedback loops create a real risk of reinforcing existing beliefs, amplifying errors, and generate false confidence. They detract from value creation rather than add.
• Artificial intelligence replaces Collective Intelligence: Having a technology that can augment or automate the processes of collective intelligence can improve its speed and accuracy. However, it can also reduce the human agency and accountability. Artificial intelligence can also obscure the sources, methods and outcomes of collective intelligence, and create ethical and social dilemmas. Artificial intelligence is a tool of collective intelligence, not the substitute.
• Natural group evolution theory: The notion that the group will naturally evolve and enhance their CI overtime may well be a reasonable academic observation but is of little practical use given the commercial and business reality of today. People constantly come and go, new objectives, technologies and new missions appear all the time. The group, unless it operates in a time lock will never have enough runway to evolve their CI sufficiently to make any significant difference. That’s why structured stimulus for CI to grow is required.

Reality of the outcomes

So let’s now look at the evidence to support the effectiveness of this approach. What do you really get back from collective intelligence relative to what you have to put in?

Gift

• Better team outputs leading to greater value: Higher collective intelligence does improve problem solving, decision making, creativity, efficiency, and innovation by combining diverse perspectives, expertise, and data. A transformation powered by strong CI will also feel a far better place to work than one that isn’t.
• Better end customer experience: Collectively intelligent teams can make new services and new products better and more responsive through more effective involvement of citizens, communities, and stakeholders in generating insights, solutions, and feedback.
• Expansion of learning mindsets: Collective intelligence practices undoubtedly foster learning and adaptation by creating feedback loops, sharing knowledge, and monitoring outcomes. It supports the creation of self-learning behaviour and non-linear learning journeys.
• Motivation through purpose: This concept of missions fuelled by communities of highly motivated individuals is one of the most powerful realities leaders and communities experience when collective intelligence of teams takes hold.
• Collective intelligence with AI in the group: For the best results leverage the power of artificial intelligence to augment human capabilities, process large amounts of data, and provide smart tools and platform to deliver the collective intelligence environment and methods.

Guff

• Watch the noise: Make no mistake, collective intelligence can suffer from the “groupthink of crowds” rather than the wisdom which will potentially impair the quality of outputs if not spotted.
• Any team can eventually deliver great results: due to inherent difficulties in identifying, verifying, and evaluating the expertise and credibility of participants and sources at the outset of team formulation the reality is many groups are destined to limp along delivering well below the required level of performance.
• The more input we get the better the outcome: In a model that promotes the virtues of crowds and communities all piling into hot topics and problems to solve would be nirvana, but sadly not. Programme Directors spend huge amounts of time resolving challenges with the coordinating, integrating, and synthesising of the contributions of many people and machines.
• Transparency equals fairness: As the team build their collective intelligence it will raise ethical and social issues such as privacy, security, accountability, and ownership of data, intellectual property and outcomes.

Is it easy to use

By now you’re probably getting the picture. This is a hugely powerful concept that could shape the future of management science, let alone approaches to transformation. But it is twitchier than a bird watcher on a 6th cup of coffee. The factors and components needed to embrace CI, let alone get the benefits are complex.

Gift

• There are tools for the job: CI can be built on existing knowledge tools and communication platforms that are widely used and familiar to transformation teams, such as online surveys, forums, wikis, blogs, social media, but these require careful consideration of user experience. Merely using multiple tools will not drive results.
• Drink for free from the data lake: Collective intelligence benefits greatly from the availability and accessibility of data and knowledge, both within and outside the organisation, that can be used to inform and support the transformation process.
• Tap into personal energy: if the mindsets of your people are right, and admittedly it is quite a big if, then it’s possible to harness the underlying motivation and engagement levels of transformation team members and stakeholders, who can contribute their ideas, opinions, and feedback, and feel more involved and valued in the process. Make sure you’re able to see high levels of curiosity among people.
• Unleash the potential of your culture: CI builds if you can foster a culture of learning and innovation within the transformation team, as they can experiment with new methods, learn from best practices, and adapt to changing needs and contexts.

Guff

• Systems thinking and doing is tough: Collective intelligence can pose technical and logistical challenges for the set up and run of Programmes, such as ensuring the reliability, security and compatibility of the tools and platforms, managing the volume and diversity of the contributions, and integrating and synthesising the results. Don’t underestimate the level of specialist knowledge required.
• The ’C’ word…again: for all the potential of CI be prepared to wage war when you encounter organisational and cultural barriers, such as resistance to change, lack of trust and support, misalignment of incentives and goals, and difficulty of coordination and communication.
• Long haul – CI is definitely a journey not the destination: It will require significant resources and skills, such as time, budget, expertise and facilitation, to design, implement and sustain the collective intelligence process, and to overcome the technical, organisational and cultural challenges.

Is collective intelligence anywhere on your radar?

As a little-known and positively juvenile management concept nobody would be blamed for saying that they’ve no idea what this concept is and certainly no clue on its role in driving transformation success. However, what should absolutely be on you to do list over the next few weeks is to be curious. Learn about this approach and assess what elements you can begin to leverage.

As a starting point, see the framework below to understand where you
transformation sits on the collective intelligence traits scale.

Conclusion & recommendations

Collective Intelligence is a game-changer. We’d go as far a saying that if you’re not experimenting with the principles and processes that form this concept then you’re losing ground at a faster rate than ever before to those that are. It is that powerful. However, it requires Programme Leaders to mindshift completely from current command and control and fast thinking preferences. It also requires approaches and infrastructure that are still in their infancy. Our recommendation is therefore to take a serious look at what’s involved and start to experiment before you attempt to scale. Get leaders on board too as they will not have learned this approach if they’ve not been near a management school in the last 5 years.

Do this by:

• Presenting the facts
• Describing the elements
• Sharing what it will take to get started

And finally...

Here at Digiworkz we run the only business transformation specific workshopson collective intelligence for curious Programme Managers and Directors. Get in touch to find out how you can attend.