COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: CREATING A PROSPEROUS WORLD AT PEACE
Cultivating collective intelligence:
a core leadership competence in a
complex world
George Pór 1
Introduction: good news and bad news are the same
Hierarchy, as the dominant form of organization is becoming irrelevant to meet
the challenges of the current tsunami of increasing complexity. Every new turn
of scientific and technological development increases the size of the complexity
waves coming at us and all our institutions. There’s no way to turn our back on
it and run.
The bad news is that most organizations are stuck in a form of organizing
their value-creation processes and relations with their internal and external
stakeholders, which is increasingly inadequate to our fast-changing world.
The good news is that it inspires renewal, including new forms of
organizing work, governance, learning, and commerce, better poised to face the
multiple challenges of our global situation. There’s a narrow, safe passage
through the looming Perfect Storm. Our best chance to go through with the
least casualties lies in mobilizing all that we have to outsmart it: the wisdom of
1
George Pór is an advisor to leaders in international business and government. Former
Senior Research Fellow at INSEAD, currently he is a PrimaVera Research Fellow in
Collective Intelligence at Universiteit van Amsterdam and Publisher of the Blog of
Collective Intelligence. His clients include: British Petroleum, EDS, Ericsson,
European Commission, European Foundation for Management Development, European
Investment Bank, Ford Motor Co., Hewlett Packard, Intel, Siemens, Sun Microsystems,
Swiss Re, and Unilever. He can be reached at George(at)Community-Intelligence.com.
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women and men, youth and elders, future-responsive change agents and
communities in business, government, and civil society.
No effort to upgrade our systems to sustainable ones will be successful
without re-inventing economics. Fortunately, that re-invention is already in
motion. Here is one of the numerous signs: “The Gartner Group identified the
technologies it believes will have the greatest impact on businesses over the
next 10 years, naming such hot areas as social-network analysis, collective
intelligence, location-aware applications and event-driven architectures…
Collective intelligence was rated as potentially transformational to businesses…
Collective intelligence was defined as an approach to developing intellectual
content, such as code and documents, through individuals working together
with no centralized authority...” 2
We can also observe the impact of CI on economics in the increasing
popularity of such concepts as wikinomics, open source, communities of
practice3 , user-driven innovation, peer production, social entrepreneurship, etc.
The common themes in all those phenomena are:
• They re-unite purposeful work with the passion of play.
• They are their participants’ source of new meaning-making
frameworks.
• Their success is based on activating the collective intelligence
of all stakeholders.
• They are frequently used for meeting high-stake problems
and opportunities.
Why we need CI—the epistemological crisis
CI is as old humankind itself. What is new is how deeply and broadly we need
to integrate local and non-local intelligences to survive and thrive. Where does
that need come from? “Ashby’s law of requisite variety states that the
2
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=191900919
See: “Liberating the Innovation Value of Communities of Practice,” by George Pór, in
the Knowledge Economics: Principles, Practices and Policies textbook (2005)
3
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complexity and speed of an actor’s response have to increase with the
complexity and speed of change in the environment.” 4
That law is dealing with the two aspects of cognitive complexity, which
we can label as “differential and integrative complexity.” They refer to the
variety in “the dimensions or scales against which one tries to evaluate a
stimulus (differential complexity), or consider in producing an output
(integrative complexity.” 5
While cognitive complexity is on the rise in all dimensions in society,
business, technology and almost all dimensions of modern life, there’s an even
stronger factor calling for CI in all those areas. It’s what Otto Scharmer termed
“generative complexity.” 6 Exposed to the conditions of increasing cognitive or
generative complexity, an organization has to strengthen its nervous system, its
network of connected conversations that matter, and connect its CI with the CI
of neighboring players in its surrounding ecosystem. That’s a fundamental
condition for “emergent collective leadership.” 7
The challenge that individuals are facing is even more biting. They were
simply not designed to keep up with the incoming waves of ever more complex
challenges and velocity of “internet time.” There’s a capability gap both at the
individual and collective level. It calls for new frameworks, methods, tools, and
practices for upgrading our current collective intelligence to CI 2.0.
To make better sense out of the fast-changing, kaleidoscopic pictures of our
technical and knowledge landscapes we have to dramatically enhance our
meaning-making strategies by learning from one another’s.
4
Huizing, A., Maes, R., and Thijssen, J.P.T., 2005, Educating Professionals:
Leveraging Diversity in Globalizing Education, PrimaVera Working Paper 2005-13
5
Cashman, A. M. and Stroll, D. 1986, “Achieving Sustainable Complexity through
Information Technology: Theory and Practice,” in: Proceedings of the Conference on
Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
6
"[G]enerative complexity deals with disruptive patterns of innovation and change.
You don't know what the solution is and you may not even know exactly what the
problem is, because it's still evolving. Most importantly, you don't know who the key
players are with whom you need to get involved." Scharmer, O. (2005) Theory-U:
Presencing emerging futures http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/newsbriefs-0605scharmer.php
7
Johnson, N.L., “Science of CI: Resources for Change” (in this book from page 265).
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There is always an ecosystem of such strategies, at all scales: from
individuals, families and friendships, to communities, organizations and global
systems. The problem is that we are so used to our own mental frames and
models of what is meaningful that exploring someone else's is almost never
heard of. Yet, it is exactly what we need to become very skillful at.
It is common knowledge that information relevant to any particular
profession is produced much faster than the capacity of that field's professionals
to make full sense of it.
What good is it to have a potential solution to a problem if the parts of that
solution are distributed in the knowledge, faculties, and experience of a large
number of players, without ways to integrate them? In that question there is a
shorthand summary of today's epistemological crisis. It is not simply one of our
numerous global crises but a horizontal one that cuts across many of the others
and is causal to their deepening.
The challenge streams that make up our global problematique grew
increasingly interdependent but our ways of knowing remain fragmented. One
can observe the same phenomenon at the organizational level, as well. The gap
between the demand of its environment and the organization's response to it,
grows proportionately with the depth of knowledge silos, a hallmark of
hierarchy-based organizing.
We know more and more about less and less. Specialization is rapidly
expanding, whilst meeting complex technical, social or business challenges
increasingly requires a systemic view and building on the mutual reliance
between individual and community intelligence.
What is collective intelligence?
As the meme “collective intelligence" is spreading fast online and off-line, so is
the range of significance associated with it. For some, it is a “wisdom of
crowds,” for others it is an inter-subjective field of energy that comes into
being when people interact from a position beyond ego, just to name two of the
popular branches of CI.
In the contexts in which I use, most frequently, the term “collective
intelligence,” it refers to the capacity of human communities to evolve towards
higher order complexity and harmony, through such innovation mechanisms as
differentiation and integration, competition and collaboration.
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Social sciences define CI from their own perspective. Researchers of CI
tend to describe it from the lens of the discipline with which they are
approaching it. For example, my definition reveals its origin in evolutionary
sociology. It doesn’t collide with, rather it complements another definition that
comes from the perspective of cognitive psychology:
“Intelligence” refers to the main cognitive powers: perception, action
planning and coordination, memory, imagination and hypothesis generation,
inquisitiveness and learning abilities. The expression “collective intelligence”
designates the cognitive powers of a group.—Pierre Lévy, Canadian Research
Chair of Collective Intelligence
Looking at CI as the capacity of human groups to evolve, we see a
compound capacity and the cognitive dimension is a significant part of it. So
are emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and spiritual intelligence.
There are many other names for CI, which emphasize its different
dimensions. Economics calls it “intelligence of markets,” meaning the
intelligence of the “invisible hand” that arranges for meeting human needs by
matching supply and demand through the price mechanism. The performance
of that intelligence reminds me of the bumper sticker that says, “If you think
the system works, ask someone for whom it doesn’t.”
We can also look at CI through the lens of political economy, where it was
introduced as “general intellect.” “General Intellect consists in a number of
competences that are inscribed in the social environment organized by capitalist
machinery, and hence available freely to its participants, by virtue of their
existence as ‘social individuals’.
These competences can be cognitive, as in technical or scientific
knowledge, but they are also social and affective...” 8 In another language, we
would talk about the intellectual, social, and structural capital of an
organization. Using those terms, one can assess its CI by the extent to which
they are aligned and harmonized. A further resource that illuminates the many
forms and meanings of CI is Collective Intelligence as a Field of Multidisciplinary Study and Practice.9
Adam Arvidsson, “Ethics and General Intellect, Chapter 2 in The Ethical Economy,
online at http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Ethics_and_General_Intellect.
9
By Tom Atlee and George Pór - http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/node/606
8
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Cultivating collective intelligence
Cultivating collective intelligence is a dimension of leadership work, which can
be neglected only by risking severe system failures when facing the complexity
tsunami. As a leadership competence, CI means—and can be assessed by—at
least, three things. It is having what it takes to: develop principles and practices
of collective leadership; awaken and engage the power of “whole person”
intelligence; and guide the development of collective sensing organs.
Develop principles and practices of collective leadership
Once, as an advisor sitting in the meeting of the leadership team in a division of
a major Canadian financial organization, I heard the division head telling his
staff, “I feel really vulnerable when I have to make a major decision without
having the possibility to consult my team due to the urgency of the situation.”
Looking at the expression on the face of the participants at that meeting, I knew
that they knew it to be true; those were not just a polite gesture. More and more
organizations are discovering the need for collective leadership but acting on
it—by developing its principles and practices—is far less frequent.
“A system has ‘collective leadership’ when people are attuned to each
other so well that, even when separate, they naturally act in harmony with each
other and the goals of the common enterprise. Most leadership teams, including
those at senior levels, are far from fulfilling their potential. They meet as
individuals, squeezing time from their more urgent work, debating from their
individual perspectives and concentrating on their individual domains of
authority. Their actions, and the actions of those who report to them,
consequently take place at cross-purposes, and they often seem trapped in
cycles of opposition and breakdown.” 10
10
Leadership for Collective Intelligence, by William Isaacs
http://www.dialogos.com/materials/LCI2005Mkt.pdf
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INTEGRAL APPROACHES AND GLOBAL CONTEXTS
Guide the development of collective sensing organs
The neural networks in living systems, biological or social, are not the source
but vital enablers of CI. “The nervous system of the global super-organism has
a potential to enable the emergence of a collective intelligence, the same way as
organic nervous systems enable the emergence of intelligence in living
systems.” 11 “The functions of such nervous systems include:

To facilitate the exchange and flow of information
among the subsystems of the organism and with its
environment.

To effectively coordinate the harmonious action of the
subsystems and the whole.

To store, organize, and recall information as needed by
the organism.

To guide and support the development of new
competences and effective behaviors.” 12
“Collective sensing mechanisms use the power of shared seeing and
dialogue to tap an unused resource of collective sense-making and thinking
together.” 13 Some questions worth asking are: How can groups and
organizations upgrade such collective sensing organs as their knowledge
networks and self-organizing knowledge ecosystems? How to improve the
organizational functions supporting and being supported by them?
We know that collaborative meaning-making at all scales of human groups
is a key condition and our best chance to adapt, survive, and thrive. In this
chapter, I use the term “meaning-making” as in: “recognizing relevance in
patterns of relationships between ideas, information, and inspirations.”
“Designing for the Emergence of a Global-scale Collective Intelligence: Invitation to
a Research Collaboration,” by George Pór
12
“The Quest for Collective Intelligence,” by George Pór, in the anthology Community
Building: Renewing Spirit and Learning in Business,
http://www.amazon.com/Community-Building-Renewing-LearningBusiness/dp/0963039059
13
Scharmer O. (2007) Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges, Cambridge,
MA: Society for Organizational Learning, 2007
11
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Given the above, enhancing the performance of our sensing organs is more
urgent today than ever. What can leaders do in relation to that? What should
leadership teams committed to boost the CI of their organization do? There’s no
recipe book that could give us the answers but two tasks appear to be more and
more certain.
1. Create conditions for collective presencng: “Leaders need to
create these spaces where people can reflect, sense, and then
prototype and implement.” 14
2. Future-responsive leaders shape the culture and structure of
their organizations as to make them more available to benefit
from the CI-enhancing potential of such Web 2.0 tools as
blogs, wikis, forums, tags, and social networking mash-ups.
CI and collective wisdom
An intelligent person is not necessarily a wise one. A team or a community
with a high collective IQ is not necessarily a wise community. One form of CI
tends to be wiser, more evolved than another if an authentic, collective self,
rather than a collective ego drives it. What does that mean?
“One of the most intriguing aspects of collective intelligence is its relative
independence from individual intelligence. It is clear to most students of the
field that a group of intelligent people will not necessarily manifest group
intelligence. Nor will a coalition of intelligent groups necessarily add up to an
intelligent coalition. Nor will making all organizations intelligent, by itself,
produce a collectively intelligent society,” wrote Tom Atlee, one of the
founders of the CI field.15 He proposes, “Wisdom characterizes any factor that
facilitates greater positive engagement with more of the whole.”
14
Scharmer, O. (2005) Theory-U: Presencing emerging futures
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/newsbriefs-0605-scharmer.php
15
“Thoughts on Wisdom and Collective Intelligence” http://www.communityintelligence.com/blogs/public/2004/07/thoughts_on_wisdom_and_collect.html
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Atlee’s insight suggests that a collective, systemic wisdom is present when
a group or an organization is capable to see, think from, and act on patterns that
connect its contexts, from the smallest to the largest. That capacity is a function
of the organization’s developmental stage.16
My working hypothesis is that the broader access all members get to the
pattern-seeking and meaning-making activities of the organization, the wiser its
collective intelligence may become. I’d be glad to verify this with organizations
aspiring for the “wisdom-driven” moniker. Any takers?
What is ahead—Augmenting CI from within
If any of the above makes any sense to you at all, you may ask, where to start
with the upgrade of your organization’s CI from its current level to CI 2.0? The
best place to start augmenting CI is within oneself. That’s because “CI is
embedded in us, in two ways:
1. We are products of the co-evolving intelligence of life itself.
Not to mention our ancestors in the mineral, plant, and animal
kingdoms, we are products of many millennia of social
evolution. We couldn’t have language, tools, not even our most
intimate thoughts and feelings, without the long journey of CI
marking stages in humankind’s history.
2. We are connected through our various networks, the nerve
endings of which are inside our own existence. The nervous
system of a group, enterprise, or other social holon, is the
network of conversations that constitutes it. Participating in
meaningful conversations, we may pursue our various
individual agenda, and as a by-product, we help the imaginal
cells17 of our CI to connect into larger patterns of meaning.” 18
See: “What color is your collective intelligence"” http://www.communityintelligence.com/blogs/public/2004/05/the_wisdom_of_crowds_and_the_c.html
17
http://www.communityintelligence.com/blogs/public/2004/05/the_collective_intelligence_of.html
18
What Is My Collective IQ? - Boosting CI from Within http://www.communityintelligence.com/blogs/public/2004/10/what_is_my_collective_iq_boost.html
16
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Given that, notice in how many conversations, shared learning journeys,
and collaborative projects you can participate before spreading too thin; just
how many “friends” you can have on Facebook or the other social networks
before emptying the concept of “friends” of any value. In contrast, if you limit
the number of learning relationships to those that matter the most, chances are
that your CI that is part of you will grow faster. So does your contribution to
the CI that you are a part of.
The art of hosting conscious evolution
Mountain climbers pick a peak, then as they move towards it, they look down at
what is in front of their feet, the next step ahead. From time to time, they also
look up, asking, are we still in the right direction of the peak? We have just
looked at the next steps of cultivating CI. Where is the peak that can inform our
direction? Depending where we are on our life’s journey, we may see different
peaks. Future-responsive leaders whose worldview is embracing the next stage
in the development of self, organizations, and societies, choose the art of
hosting conscious evolution, as the highest peak worth climbing. If you are one
of them, get ready for the expedition, collect your team, your sherpas, your
equipment, and your courage. Good journey to you!
An expanded version of this chapter is available from the author,
george(at)community-intelligence(dot)com
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