The focus on intelligence is based on the premise that the quality of thinking of the members ofthe organization will be the prime determiner of business and organizational success and the one capability on which the business could depend in all markets and conditions.

The approach to development of intelligence emerges from “living systems theory” and is based on how intelligence functions, universally, in all living systems. In addition to P&G Lima, Ohio, other organizations that have followed this path have found long-term payoffs in business growth earnings as well the experience of joy and fulfillment from this meaningful approach to work. Below are several practice used by Procter and Gamble as cited by CEO A. G Lafley as one of the most innovative systems of all time in his recent book, P & G’s Innovation Culture.

Building Intelligence: Some processes that increase intellectual capacity:

Breaking routines: Avoid doing the same things twice in exactly the same way. The process requires interpreting meaning and utility and seeing the need to invent applications for the new ideas. It increases the neural networks and make the mind flexible.

External Focus: Connect people’s minds to the external environment as their source of motives. Where internal measures are the source of information, we care for others when we foster caring, because most often, the reactive part in us looks for the “threat” or the “battle.” Every employee takes stewardship for and is measured by a customer’s or market’s effectiveness and the success of the whole. Although our experience is that they are insufficient by themselves, this is why profit sharing systems are more effective than incentives for individual employees or teams. The human brain works best when it can work on how the whole can succeed, where as the reactive part of us operates by the dictum of “every man for himself”. Working primarily on improving the customer’s performance, and measuring all performance by that parameter, puts our full brains to work in an integrated way. Each employee can be connected to and responsible for a particular customer and that customer’s business effectiveness—a global brain task. This immediately calls the highest part of ourselves into service and requires the emotional part of us to use it’s relational intelligence to think about what will make the customer more successful. This is especially true if the measures of success are customer’s. Most business people think this creates accountability for things over which people cannot have control, and it is better to keep them more closely focused. This is really only because the intelligence to engage with customer improvements is not developed.

Intrinsic Rewards: Foregoing feedback instruments, and appraisals directed by others is foundational to having people reflect on their own behavior and become self-accountability for the effects they create in the world. Motivation is self directed and more demanding when personal reflection is the means of discipline. This gives room to build healthy working relationships and challenges us to see the effects of personal actions on the future and on all stakeholders to an action or set of actions.

Work with Mental Structures and frameworks, those natural to a complete thinking process, to cause the mind to build relationships among ideas and possibilities. When you walk through an operation or office of a company building intelligence as well as skills, you see walls covered, not with list and numbers, but with ideas as symbols and structures that show the relationships and impacts of ideas on one another. Seeing the system at work inspires, and the frameworks generate increased completeness in thinking and breaks down conflicts among egos.

Work in a dialogue mode: when people have to exchange and develop thinking together, it causes the brain to build new neural networks and to mylenate the pathways that connect them thereby building more possible connections and associations. This is true as long as internally competitive processes are not introduced. Dialogue also fosters the desire to support others and stimulates the value for support in return. Dialogue was a mode developed in ancient Greece by Socrates, and is frequently referred to as Socratic Method. Socrates held that a lecture or persuasive way of attempting to transfer knowledge was really only a transfer of opinions. He believed that knowledge developed through internal processing was needed for one to become a thinking person and to have the chance of achieving excellence. He argued repeatedly that unless one could develop one’s own well developed reasoning regarding the meaning and working of ideas and virtues, could defend one’s idea into a debate, and could test for understanding in one’s life— it was not possible to really acquire virtues and therefore not possible to become a person who reflected excellence. Only through deep understanding, which is an inner process, could one gain such knowledge and understanding. He believed that only through the nature of examination it takes to develop critical thinking skills and to face one’s own personal limitations in trying to develop critical thinking, could one develop the inner experience of virtue and true intelligence. As long as one holds an opinion that has merely been adopted from others (whether parent, teacher or leader), it is not possible to actually understand thinking nor is it possible to actually be intelligent.

Lead from principles: Work primarily from principles as a leadership tool rather than from “standards and procedures”. Principles have been popularized by Stephen Covey, but few organizations have adopted them as a way of working. P&G Lima managed and operated by principles from the early 60’s and found that they require judgment processes that principles could help them make, so the full capacity of our intelligence is called upon. The principles, if well developed by those who will use them most, also have embedded in them the values of “the whole” and an understanding of the effects they seek to realize. If wisely considered and constructed, they also beget continuous improvement as a way of living by them. So we move from rules such as “Get it right the first time” to a principle such as, “Seek to continuously improve the product and the process, for ourselves and our customer’s benefit, with each thought we have and action we take”. In the first guideline, we are “right or wrong” each time, the work of the reactive brain. In the later principle, we must always build our capacity to perform better for the benefit of a grander and greater whole. This inspires us to be all we can be, to borrow a phrase, and to do it better with each succeeding day.

Executive summary of article published in Executive Excellence, Stephen Covey’s Leadership Newsletter. Building Intelligence: A Living Systems View Complete article available

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