orgintelligence

Expert Generalists and Innovative Organizations

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What do the great innovators have in common? Looking at examples from Picasso to Kepler, Art Markman calls these men expert generalists. They seem to know a lot about a wide variety of topics, and their wide knowledge base supports their creativity.

Markman identifies two personality traits that are key for expert generalists: Openness to Experience and Need for Cognition. Can we also expect to find these traits in innovative organizations?

Openness to Experience entails a willingness to explore new ideas and opportunities. Obviously many organizations prefer to stick with familiar ideas and activities, and have built-in ways of maintaining the status quo.

Need for Cognition entails a joy of learning, and a willingness to devote the time and effort necessary to master new things. 

In his post on the origins of modern science, Tim Johnson compares the rival claims of magic and commerce. He points out that good science is open whereas magic is hidden and secretive; he traces the foundations of modern science to European financial practice, on the grounds that markets are social, collaborative, open, forums. But perhaps it makes more sense to see modern science as having two parents: from magic it inherits its Need for Cognition, a deep and passionate interest in explaining how things work; while from commerce it inherits its Openness to Experience, a broad fascination with the unknown. Obviously there have been individual scientists who have had more of one than the other, and some outstanding individual scientists who have excelled at both, but the collective project of science has relied on an effective combination of these two qualities.

Read more »

Expert Generalists and Innovative Organizations

by

What do the great innovators have in common? Looking at examples from Picasso to Kepler, Art Markman calls these men expert generalists. They seem to know a lot about a wide variety of topics, and their wide knowledge base supports their creativity.

Markman identifies two personality traits that are key for expert generalists: Openness to Experience and Need for Cognition. Can we also expect to find these traits in innovative organizations?

Openness to Experience entails a willingness to explore new ideas and opportunities. Obviously many organizations prefer to stick with familiar ideas and activities, and have built-in ways of maintaining the status quo.

Need for Cognition entails a joy of learning, and a willingness to devote the time and effort necessary to master new things. 

In his post on the origins of modern science, Tim Johnson compares the rival claims of magic and commerce. He points out that good science is open whereas magic is hidden and secretive; he traces the foundations of modern science to European financial practice, on the grounds that markets are social, collaborative, open, forums. But perhaps it makes more sense to see modern science as having two parents: from magic it inherits its Need for Cognition, a deep and passionate interest in explaining how things work; while from commerce it inherits its Openness to Experience, a broad fascination with the unknown. Obviously there have been individual scientists who have had more of one than the other, and some outstanding individual scientists who have excelled at both, but the collective project of science has relied on an effective combination of these two qualities.

Read more »

On Readiness

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In his presentation on Enterprise Agility at the SCiO meeting yesterday, Patrick Hoverstadt introduced the concept of Yarak.

In falconry, the word Yarak describes a trained hawk that is fit and in a proper condition for hunting. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word entered the English language in the 19th century, perhaps from Persian yārakī ‘strength, ability’ or from Turkish yaraǧ ‘readiness’.

Patrick explained that Yarak involves a balance between two forces – motivation and strength. The falcon has to be hungry enough to want to hunt, and strong enough to hunt effectively. So the falconer has to get the balance right: too little food and the creature cannot hunt, too much food and it can’t be bothered.

When I talk to people about building organizational intelligence in their own organizations, I hear two forms of resistance. One is that the organization has so little inherent intelligence at present that the task is daunting; the other is that the bosses wouldn’t want it.

When I take examples from glamorous high-tech companies like Microsoft and Google, this can provoke a somewhat fatalist reaction. People say: This kind of intelligence may be all very well for these hi-tech birds of prey, but ordinary companies like us simply don’t have the resources or capability to do any of this stuff. 

So it’s important to see examples from ordinary companies as well as from the glamorous ones. Every company has some intelligence, although it may be patchy, fragmented and inconsistent. So we need to find ways of linking and leveraging this intelligence to create a positive spiral of improvement.

As for the question of motivation, there will still be many organizations where the senior management team, perhaps lacking confidence in its own intelligence, will lack enthusiasm for developing intelligence across the rest of the organization. This may be a generation thing – the younger generation of management may be much more comfortable with new styles of management (such as “Theory Y”) as well as with social networking and other technologies.

Does this mean we have to wait for a generation, until the current bosses have shuffled off to the golf course or the Caribbean cruise? Not if the organization can start to develop intelligence in a bottom-up piecemeal fashion. In which case, what matters is the motivation and strength of the people and groups across the organization, and not just the motivation and strength of the bosses. Can we achieve some useful results without top-down support?

On Readiness

by

In his presentation on Enterprise Agility at the SCiO meeting yesterday, Patrick Hoverstadt introduced the concept of Yarak.

In falconry, the word Yarak describes a trained hawk that is fit and in a proper condition for hunting. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word entered the English language in the 19th century, perhaps from Persian yārakī ‘strength, ability’ or from Turkish yaraǧ ‘readiness’.

Patrick explained that Yarak involves a balance between two forces – motivation and strength. The falcon has to be hungry enough to want to hunt, and strong enough to hunt effectively. So the falconer has to get the balance right: too little food and the creature cannot hunt, too much food and it can’t be bothered.

When I talk to people about building organizational intelligence in their own organizations, I hear two forms of resistance. One is that the organization has so little inherent intelligence at present that the task is daunting; the other is that the bosses wouldn’t want it.

When I take examples from glamorous high-tech companies like Microsoft and Google, this can provoke a somewhat fatalist reaction. People say: This kind of intelligence may be all very well for these hi-tech birds of prey, but ordinary companies like us simply don’t have the resources or capability to do any of this stuff. 

So it’s important to see examples from ordinary companies as well as from the glamorous ones. Every company has some intelligence, although it may be patchy, fragmented and inconsistent. So we need to find ways of linking and leveraging this intelligence to create a positive spiral of improvement.

As for the question of motivation, there will still be many organizations where the senior management team, perhaps lacking confidence in its own intelligence, will lack enthusiasm for developing intelligence across the rest of the organization. This may be a generation thing – the younger generation of management may be much more comfortable with new styles of management (such as “Theory Y”) as well as with social networking and other technologies.

Does this mean we have to wait for a generation, until the current bosses have shuffled off to the golf course or the Caribbean cruise? Not if the organization can start to develop intelligence in a bottom-up piecemeal fashion. In which case, what matters is the motivation and strength of the people and groups across the organization, and not just the motivation and strength of the bosses. Can we achieve some useful results without top-down support?

How to make change happen in government

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Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s one-time policy adviser currently on mid-term sabbatical in California, has given Stanford students some frank insights into the workings of Government.

  • The Prime Minister sometimes opposes the measures his own ministers put forward. He often finds out about these policies from the radio or newspapers.
  • Only 30 per cent of what the government is doing is actually delivering what we are supposed to be doing.
  • It’s a brilliant system for paper-shuffling people to be in control.  The bureaucracy masters the politicians.

I just wanted to make a few comments about collective intelligence and the role of the policy adviser.

Some Prime Ministers and Presidents have had an extraordinary ability to get through large quantities of paperwork and master the critical points. Cameron has many strengths as a leader, but this doesn’t seem to be one of them. As a consequence of this, he is effectively leaving journalists to perform a filtering function – thus he pays attention to an issue only when it is drawn to his attention by the media, and of course, this delayed attention may cause some irritation or embarrassment sometimes. Perhaps a more diligent policy adviser should have picked up some of these issues earlier?

In the system we may infer from Hilton’s description, journalists are not only performing a filtering function but also a sensemaking function. There is clearly a difference between the way a policy looks in some bundle of government papers and how it looks when it appears in the media. Again, we might have expected a diligent policy adviser to have anticipated how policies would appear to the public.

But it seems that the politicians and their advisers don’t control the volume of paperwork they are given to wade through. In his seminar, Hilton dramatically produced a pile of paper one foot high (representing four days committee output), prompting gasps from students. “The idea that a couple of political advisers read through all this and spot things that are bad, things that are contradictory, is just inconceivable”, pleads Hilton.

Of course it is, say members of the previous government including Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former political press secretary. Which is why the previous government had a greater number of political advisers, and a coordination process (known as the “grid”) allocating a manageable number of pages to each. McBride acknowledges that the grid sometimes resulted in leaks to journalists, and suggests that Hilton may have downgraded the grid in order to reduce these leaks, but argues that the grid was a key mechanism for effective government and that the problems Hilton complains about are an inevitable consequence of abandoning this mechanism.

It may also be a consequence of regarding the civil service as a malignant force, trying to pull the wool over the politicians’ eyes. (This was a great theme in the original “Yes Minister” series, but has turned into a tired joke in the 2013 series.) Edward Pearce stands up for the independence of the civil service, and complains that it is Hilton who is unrepresentative and unelected.

When Hilton talks about “delivering what we are supposed to be doing”, this presumably refers to some kind of top-down strategic plan, formulated before the election and presented in the manifesto. But this raises some important questions about the relationship between strategy and execution, and the possibility for strategies to emerge and evolve during execution.

Which in turn raises some questions about government as a learning system. Recent governments (including Blair’s New Labour) have had a focus on delivery, which emphasizes single-loop learning – getting better at achieving a fixed set of goals. However, this has to be balanced against double-loop learning – changing the goals to fit changing circumstances.

In an earlier analysis of New Labour and Delivery, two MORI analysts argued that delivery and achievement was at least partially subjective and rhetorical.

  • “Delivery” is not keeping your promises, it is convincing the public that you have kept your promises.
  • What matters is not what you promise, but what the public understands by those promises, and what expectations they arouse.

Hilton clearly agrees about the importance of external communication. He encourages his students to think about how policies can be “branded”, and suggests that policies often fail not because they weren’t very good policies in the first place but because they are poorly presented. That might be true, but it is also a common excuse: politicians genererally find it easier to admit to errors in presentation than to errors in policy.

Which part of this ecosytem has the longest memory?  Presumably the civil servants. And which part has the shortest memory? With some honourable exceptions, probably the media. According to one theory of change, when there are several subsystems operating on different timescales, it is the slowest system that controls the whole. And the Purpose Of the System Is What It Does.

Roger Mortimore and Mark Gill, New Labour and Delivery (IPSOS MORI May 2004)

PM’s aide exposes No 10’s lack of control (Sunday Times, 13 January 2013) (subscription)

John Harlow and Eric Kiefer, Shoes off, feet up, the dude lifts lid on No 10 (Sunday Times, 13 January 2013)

Patrick Hennessy, David Cameron finds out about policies from the newspapers, reveals Steve Hilton (The Telegraph 13 January 2013)

Damien McBride, Whither the Grid? (13 January 2013) Why did the Grid Wither? (14 January 2013)

Edward Pearce, The Unelected (LRB 25 January 2013)

James Tapsfield, Prime Minister often finds out about policies from the radio or newspapers, says former advisor Hilton (The Independent 13 January 2013)

Richard Veryard (ed), Fragile Strategy or Fragile Execution (Storify, December 2012)

Nicholas Watt, David Cameron’s ex-policy guru Steve Hilton criticised over policy remarks (Guardian, 13 January 2013)

updated 25 January 2013

How to make change happen in government

by

Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s one-time policy adviser currently on mid-term sabbatical in California, has given Stanford students some frank insights into the workings of Government.

  • The Prime Minister sometimes opposes the measures his own ministers put forward. He often finds out about these policies from the radio or newspapers.
  • Only 30 per cent of what the government is doing is actually delivering what we are supposed to be doing.
  • It’s a brilliant system for paper-shuffling people to be in control.  The bureaucracy masters the politicians.

I just wanted to make a few comments about collective intelligence and the role of the policy adviser.

Some Prime Ministers and Presidents have had an extraordinary ability to get through large quantities of paperwork and master the critical points. Cameron has many strengths as a leader, but this doesn’t seem to be one of them. As a consequence of this, he is effectively leaving journalists to perform a filtering function – thus he pays attention to an issue only when it is drawn to his attention by the media, and of course, this delayed attention may cause some irritation or embarrassment sometimes. Perhaps a more diligent policy adviser should have picked up some of these issues earlier?

In the system we may infer from Hilton’s description, journalists are not only performing a filtering function but also a sensemaking function. There is clearly a difference between the way a policy looks in some bundle of government papers and how it looks when it appears in the media. Again, we might have expected a diligent policy adviser to have anticipated how policies would appear to the public.

But it seems that the politicians and their advisers don’t control the volume of paperwork they are given to wade through. In his seminar, Hilton dramatically produced a pile of paper one foot high (representing four days committee output), prompting gasps from students. “The idea that a couple of political advisers read through all this and spot things that are bad, things that are contradictory, is just inconceivable”, pleads Hilton.

Of course it is, say members of the previous government including Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former political press secretary. Which is why the previous government had a greater number of political advisers, and a coordination process (known as the “grid”) allocating a manageable number of pages to each. McBride acknowledges that the grid sometimes resulted in leaks to journalists, and suggests that Hilton may have downgraded the grid in order to reduce these leaks, but argues that the grid was a key mechanism for effective government and that the problems Hilton complains about are an inevitable consequence of abandoning this mechanism.

It may also be a consequence of regarding the civil service as a malignant force, trying to pull the wool over the politicians’ eyes. (This was a great theme in the original “Yes Minister” series, but has turned into a tired joke in the 2013 series.) Edward Pearce stands up for the independence of the civil service, and complains that it is Hilton who is unrepresentative and unelected.

When Hilton talks about “delivering what we are supposed to be doing”, this presumably refers to some kind of top-down strategic plan, formulated before the election and presented in the manifesto. But this raises some important questions about the relationship between strategy and execution, and the possibility for strategies to emerge and evolve during execution.

Which in turn raises some questions about government as a learning system. Recent governments (including Blair’s New Labour) have had a focus on delivery, which emphasizes single-loop learning – getting better at achieving a fixed set of goals. However, this has to be balanced against double-loop learning – changing the goals to fit changing circumstances.

In an earlier analysis of New Labour and Delivery, two MORI analysts argued that delivery and achievement was at least partially subjective and rhetorical.

  • “Delivery” is not keeping your promises, it is convincing the public that you have kept your promises.
  • What matters is not what you promise, but what the public understands by those promises, and what expectations they arouse.

Hilton clearly agrees about the importance of external communication. He encourages his students to think about how policies can be “branded”, and suggests that policies often fail not because they weren’t very good policies in the first place but because they are poorly presented. That might be true, but it is also a common excuse: politicians genererally find it easier to admit to errors in presentation than to errors in policy.

Which part of this ecosytem has the longest memory?  Presumably the civil servants. And which part has the shortest memory? With some honourable exceptions, probably the media. According to one theory of change, when there are several subsystems operating on different timescales, it is the slowest system that controls the whole. And the Purpose Of the System Is What It Does.

Roger Mortimore and Mark Gill, New Labour and Delivery (IPSOS MORI May 2004)

PM’s aide exposes No 10’s lack of control (Sunday Times, 13 January 2013) (subscription)

John Harlow and Eric Kiefer, Shoes off, feet up, the dude lifts lid on No 10 (Sunday Times, 13 January 2013)

Patrick Hennessy, David Cameron finds out about policies from the newspapers, reveals Steve Hilton (The Telegraph 13 January 2013)

Damien McBride, Whither the Grid? (13 January 2013) Why did the Grid Wither? (14 January 2013)

Edward Pearce, The Unelected (LRB 25 January 2013)

James Tapsfield, Prime Minister often finds out about policies from the radio or newspapers, says former advisor Hilton (The Independent 13 January 2013)

Richard Veryard (ed), Fragile Strategy or Fragile Execution (Storify, December 2012)

Nicholas Watt, David Cameron’s ex-policy guru Steve Hilton criticised over policy remarks (Guardian, 13 January 2013)

updated 25 January 2013

Challenge-Led Innovation

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#oipsrv One view of innovation is that it is motivated by a series of challenges. Once upon a time, we would have used the word “problems”, and called this the “problem-solving” approach to innovation. But the word “problem” is now taboo in…

On Agility, Culture and Intelligence

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Deal and Kennedy (1982) proposed a model of organizational culture, which depended on two factors, risk and the speed of feedback.

Source: Deal and Kennedy

Meanwhile, speed of feedback also affects organizational intelligence. Shorter feedback loops are associated with greater agility and responsiveness, and faster learning, and is a popular meme of the Agile Software movement. Shahzad Bhatti is one of those who emphasizes the link with John Boyd’s OODA loop.

“One of key finding he made was that shorter feedback or iteration loop of OODA with low quality was better than longer or tiring cycle of OODA with high quality. Despite the fact that everyone calls his/her organization agile, this feedback loop is real essense of agility.”

So that seems to associate Agile with the upper two quadrants of the Deal and Kennedy model, and OODA with the top left quadrant.

So then what are the cultural implications of Agile for the host organization?

Notes and references

Lisa Crispin, Shortening the Feedback Loop (March 2011)
Ilan Kirschenbaum, What does a butterfly say at the end of the day? (May 2012)
Rune Larsen, Know your feedback loop – why and how to optimize it (Oct 2012)
Thomas Sundberg, Why should you use different technical practises when you develop software? (April 2011)

Places are still available on my Organizational Intelligence workshop, November 22nd.