Maximizing Collective Intelligence Means Giving Up Control

I think that this is one of the key things I keep running into, sometimes in my own thinking, quite often with people I'm trying to talk with about corporisations and emergence.

If a group is behaving collectively smarter than any individual, then it — by definition — is behaving in a way that is beyond any individual’s capability. If that’s the case, then traditional notions of command-and-control do not apply. The paradigm of really smart people thinking really hard, coming up with the “right” solution, then exerting control over other individuals in order to implement that solution is faulty.

I think our temptation -like in the latest management wizardry books- is to think that somehow it's quasi mechanical: push the button, pull the lever and it's a guaranteed outcome. We're actually in the game of recognising that it's complicated and the outcomes will be co-created and that means sometimes unpredictable flows and unpowerful people can significantly and oddly change things. It's like having a calculating machine: if you knew the answer before doing the calculation, you wouldn't need to do the calculation. The interactions of people in a corporisation are a kind of calculation -the outcome is discovered in the operation.

So when we are looking to make changes for justice and humanity in corporisations, we have to recognise that we can only engage with good heart. We can't expect anyone or any group to deliver a guaranteed answer. We can only engage with the process and keep trying and keep interacting with as many people and groups as we can.

Maximizing Collective Intelligence Means Giving Up Control: