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| Home - Industry Article - Nov 06 Issue |
How to Improve Your Organization’s Group Intelligence
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Organizations that are serious about group intelligence develop or acquire structured ways of working to address five mission-critical processes for innovation and growth: discovery, ideation, teaming, leading and learning.
- Discovery: Uncovering who knows what, who knows whom and who knows how to do tasks or projects better, anywhere in the world and outside the native organization
- Ideation: Generating ideas and ways to innovate, grow or solve problems, thus, projecting the possibilities for the future
- Teaming: Converging on a few important choices or possibilities that the group may be capable of further developing and supporting
- Leading: Achieving high levels of consensus by means of complex, rich voting so that all group members are confident that their voices have been heard, their votes counted and that an effective voting methodology was employed
- Learning: Documenting group work or group memory for subsequent work, for members unable to attend work sessions or for inclusion in other artifacts
Whether the group is responsible for strategic planning or product design or organization development, some or all of these processes are essential to achieve high group intelligence; and each of these processes rests upon:
- Some measure of structure
- Anonymous contribution so that all voices are heard
- The promotion of creative, daring thinking to get outside the proverbial box of common possibilities
- Group moderation and facilitation can help a great deal, whether it takes the form of a team leader or a third-party consultant
Jump-Starting Group Intelligence
What’s at stake is nothing less than innovation and growth of your organization. So how do you get started? You should focus on five aspects of group intelligence hygiene:
Right Group: It is probably best to entrust initial group intelligence sessions to a work group that has a working history and sense of trust and respect, therefore, group focus is on the tasks and outcomes and not on group politics.
Right Challenge: In Europe, just about every organization stages an August or September strategic planning retreat with top management and key workers. Portions of the retreat could incorporate group intelligence methodologies and technologies.
Right Outcomes: At the outset define the nature and types of outcomes that might represent unusual group intelligence, so as to set a benchmark for the work group (e.g., at least five new product names, or, at least three new product concepts for the retiring worker population).
Right Place: Make decisions about how essential face-to-face work is, how much virtual contributions are suitable and where (either physical or virtual) the meeting will be conducted.
Right Technology: Many of the most commonly known technologies such as WebEx, web-conferencing, wikis and instant messaging or email are incapable of enabling group intelligence because they lack the structure or workflow capabilities you will need.
- Find the right structured collaboration technology for your organization
- Ensure that your choice possesses presence control, agenda management, anonymous contribution, various voting tools and capabilities to auto-document the group’s memory or work products. Graphing and charting is also quite helpful.
- Finally, a browser-based technology will make a world of a difference for ease of use and instant access by remote members.
Luis F. Solis is CEO and President of GroupSystems Corporation. He is also a well-recognized business leader and venture investor in collaboration technology, supply chain, and global logistics management. A graduate with honors from Stanford Business and Law School (JD/MBA), Luis is a licensed California attorney who started his career at McCown de Leeuw & Company in leveraged buyouts. Career positions at GE Capital and GeoLogistics Corporation have contributed to his expertise and experience in group intelligence as he has consulted or managed outsourcing programs with numerous Global 1,000 organizations. For article feedback, contact Luis at luis.solis@groupsystems.com
 
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