Dan Erwin

Collective Intelligence, or . . . Collective Stupidity?

Collective intelligence has been around for a long time--and in many different forms. For example, people from all over the world collectively created Wikipedia and Linux, high quality intellectual products.

But what makes for the best, the most trusted collective intelligence? Is it a lot of smart people, or perhaps more creative folk? It’s a highly significant question, because it speaks to the formation of teams and groups for gaining the most business impact.

In a fascinating article, Thomas Malone, Director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, answers that question. And his answer is more than a little surprising. Initially, the Center staff looked at individual smarts, then things like the psychological safety of the group, the personality of the group members and other typically relevant factors. Malone said that most of the things that they thought might affect performance turned out not to have any significant effect. But they found that there were three factors that were “significantly correlated with the collective intelligence of the group.”

• Social perceptiveness of the group members. Typically, social perceptiveness refers to an awareness of others behaviors and an understanding of why they act the way they’re acting. Social perceptiveness is a form of interpersonal intelligence, a.k.a. emotional intelligence. The more socially perceptive are not only aware and understanding, but they also know how to deal with negative responses and how to leverage positive actions of others. Malone’s team measured social perceptiveness through the use of a test, the “Reading the Mind and the Eyes Test,” that was developed essentially to measure autism. People who are good at that work well in groups. When you have a group with a bunch of people like that, the group as a whole is more intelligent.

• Evenness of conversational turn taking. Turn-taking is rarely talked about directly in business settings unless there’s an experienced facilitator available. Turn-taking is often thought of as even or nearly equal “air-time” for each member in a team meeting. But more than being a quantitative issue, it’s also a qualitative issue. In the best situations, turn-taking implies substantive contributions from each member of the group. Malone’s research found that evenness of conversational turn-taking correlated with more intelligent groups and group decision making. And, conversely, groups where one person dominated the conversation were, on average, less intelligent than groups with evenly distributed turn-taking.

• Percentage of women in the group. Malone writes that the most surprising correlation was that the more women in the group, the more intelligent the group. This last result is not just a diversity result. It’s not just saying that you need groups with some men and some women. It looks like that it’s a more or less linear trend. That is, more women are better all the way up to all women. It’s well-known that on average women are more socially perceptive than men. Obviously, this research adds still more to that research: put together a team of experts, including a significant percentage of women and you’ll get more and better collective intelligence.

This is not to say any woman—or man—off the street impacts team intelligence. This assumes that the people you put in a group have some expertise in the area related to the needed decisions. As Malone indicated, he defines group intelligence the same way individual intelligence is defined: somebody who’s good at a lot of mental things, somebody who is good at learning quickly, at adapting to new situations, at doing a bunch of things. One thing is for certain: this information ought to make managers and leaders think seriously about more women in business, and think still more seriously about the formation of teams and groups for strategic business matters.

Flickr photo: prsinc333

Krauthammer and Michigan's Unions

I read Charles Krauthammer faithfully. Half the time, I want to vomit, but still I read him. It’s because he’s often correct in his analysis. And, I very often learn more from the people I disagree with than from my own tribal members.

So today’s column, The right-to-work dilemma, is instructive. Note that the interpretive title of his article is correct: this is a dilemma. It’s not a clear-cut, obvious decision, in spite of the fact that Michigan’s governor and his colleagues were more than a bit unscrupulous in their decision making.

The best information in columns is usually in the middle—and the middle of the column is usually the writer’s agenda. Dead-center of the column, Krauthammer reminds us that Obama calls the right-to-work law a race to the bottom. Or, as another writer paraphrased Obama, the right-to-work law is the right for business to pay you a lower salary.

But Krauthammer is quite correct: It’s a race to a new equilibrium that tries to maintain employment levels, albeit at the price of some modest wage. It is a choice not to be despised.

But here is Krauthammer’s admission of truth, a truth rarely admitted by the hard-right: I have great admiration for the dignity and protections trade unionism has brought to American workers. I have no great desire to see the private-sector unions defenestrated. . . .

One of the more intriguing, though wrong, conclusions about the work of unions came from the Nobel Prize economist, Gary Becker, who opined that labor unions are slowing the US’ economic recovery and making it harder for the country to compete overseas. The fact of the matter, as economists Richard Freeman and James Medoff have calculated, is that in 1980, when a quarter of the work force was covered by collective bargaining agreements, organized labor reduced the gross national product by just one-fifth to two-fifths of one percent.

It should be obvious that the social and economic benefits of unions outweigh those costs. Unions equalize pay within companies. More importantly, they also improve pay outside their own workplaces. Furthermore, highly unionized states have higher minimum wages and more generous welfare benefits, and—uniquely—spend more money on education. That’s all terrifically important in a world where our deficits are not only financial. But they’re also the deficits of education, infrastructure and innovation.

Growing up in Detroit, I am very aware that the middle-class was the creation of the auto industry. I’m also aware that growing up in Detroit in the ‘40s and ‘50s was the gift of the gods. Everything anyone wanted was available to nearly all, sports, the arts, education, etc., etc. And let’s get personal: my college education was the result of union power. Those days are dead and gone. So now, I fear for the children of union workers. Especially since education at a top school can cost upwards of $65,000 a year. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The union dilemma is not merely fiscal, it’s primarily political.

Quotation of the Week: Ehud Barak, Defense Minister of Israel

--I am worried about our tendency to adopt a fatalistic, pessimistic perception of history. Because once you adopt it, you are relieved from the responsibility to see the better aspects and seize the opportunities when they arise.

 Barak made the statement in an interview with the NYTimes’ Tom Friedman. As Friedman writes, the unspoken question in the mind of every Israeli—that you need to answer correctly is, “Do you understand what neighborhood I’m living in?” If Israelis smell that you don’t, their ears will close to you.

Hawks, like Netanyahu, answer it their way, certain that nothing can ever alter the unchangeable hatred of the Jewish state. In contrast, the Yitzhak Rabin school of “bastards for peace,” believes that you should test, test, and test again to find a Palestinian partner for a secure peace. Thus, Barak’s statement represents the Rabin school.

With few exceptions, it’s rare to see philosophical statements comparable to this from American politicians regarding most any important subject, whether government, education or even universal healthcare. Instead what we get too often is a party line, closed, unthinking and too often unwilling to test and keep testing.

There’s a lot of pessimism out there. What would happen if . . . ?

Flickr photo: cvrck1

A New Take on the Job Interview

The quality of your questions is more important than your answers.

As the economy heats up, more professionals are interviewing for new jobs. Although a recruiting manager usually initiates the questioning, the smart candidate guides the interview with questions. The fact of the matter is that recruiters are suckers for good questions. And it’s not merely that you’re in the know about an organization or that you want better information to make your decision, but quality questions impress more than quality information. That fact will put the interview into a different category and give your candidacy a leg up on the job.

Obviously, you want to be prepared for the interview by knowing as much as possible about the firm, its managers and the position for which you’re interviewing. Early in the interview, however, most recruiting managers will lob softballs like, “How would you describe your management style?” and, “What was your biggest work challenge, and how did you handle it?” But if you pay close attention to these early questions and answer them quickly, AND if you’ve devoted time to developing the conversational tools, you can pivot to your own questions and orchestrate the interview graciously and warmly.

Why do questions by the candidate work so well? It’s because recruiters and managers love to be asked to display their knowledge base. But the psychological underpinnings of these situations grant the questioner a great deal of subtle, usually hidden power.

So where do you start the interview process and what are the more useful questions?

Keep values up front: You’ll want to work for a firm that will provide new learning, values critical thinking, emphasizes transparency, expects adaptability, and uses smart technology. And if you’re not astute about those values, in a few years you’ll be on the streets.

Voracious listening: Stay alert to what their questions and their answers say about the organizational culture, its values, priorities and ways of working. What’s their rhetoric--what kind of language do they use? Techie? Strategic? Relational? Customer-centric? Results oriented? All of the above? How extensive is the vocabulary? (My rule: the quality of the vocabulary and sentence nuance tell you how effective the firm and its managers are at problem solving. If they’re using 8 word sentences and averaging 7 letter words, there may not be much to learn from the organization.)

Examples: Whatever the answer to your questions, always ask for examples. Recruiting managers can bullshit with abstract ideas until the cows come home unless you ask for concrete examples.

Decision-making: How effective is the organization at analytical problem solving and decision making? How do decisions get made and by whom? How willing is the organization to manage differences and conflicts? How do they manage people and projects? What prospects for growth do you see in their answers to these questions?

How good is the firm at . . . Seeing around the corners, identifying competitive advantages that other similar firms miss, building and maintaining competitive advantages, managing crises, managing results, managing growth? And how good is their follow-through? If they lack good answers to these questions, the organization is not long for this world.

Company expertise: What are their core technologies? Sales? IT? Logistics? Marketing? Finance? Research and development? Manufacturing? Don’t believe that they can offer more than two core technologies. If the recruiter tells you they have more than that they’re bullshitting. Best example: 3M Corporation has only one core technology: adhesives. They know more about adhesives (R&D) than any ten other firms. They’re poor at marketing, so-so at sales, adequate at manufacturing, ordinary at finance, and the leader of the followers in technology. But boy, do they know adhesives and they make $$Billions on adhesive products. Strategy?  “Make a little, sell a little.” Or, Ralston Purina: Marketing is really their only core technology. And they own the dry pet food business all over the world. (There’s a lesson in all that!) It can be argued that the reason General Motors got lost in the last thirty years is that they had no highly valued core technology, while other auto firms had focused on developing a technology or two.

Recruiters’ commitment: Why do the interviewers like working at the firm? Why is this important to them? What two things does the company need to do better for its employees? This should give you further insights into whether or not you want to work for the firm.

The job position: Parameters, responsibilities, reporting relationships, freedom to define issues, objectives, etc. Opportunities for advancement? Career ladders are largely non-existent today. But your ability to see opportunity is your real career future.

Compensation: Don’t be in a hurry to talk about salary. The more you understand the job, are able to segment it and talk about it from several perspectives, emphasizing its complexity, the better salary you’ll be able to obtain. In addition, what benefits and, especially, what training will the company provide or fund? Last, what are the things of importance that you want in a position?

A dangerous question: I’d be cautious about the use of this question, but it’s one of my favorites: “How would I get in trouble in this firm?” If you get an honest answer, you’re liable to find it quite valuable. Ignore the obvious responses like theft, “politics,” or “game playing.” If the answer is trite, sit there and wait through the silent nerves until you get an intelligent answer. If nothing comes, that’s important information too. One thing it means is that you need to interview with someone else at the firm.

Certainly, there are more than an hour’s questions here. So, depending on the situation and your interests, pick and choose. However, when you listen voraciously and you hear the recruiting manager come up with some unique, outlying information, then you can use those well-developed conversational skills to find out a lot more useful data. And it’s liable to be very, very good stuff.

Photo by flickr.com: angusmci