‘Competitive Success Depends on Enablement‘ doesn’t specifically mention Collaborative Intelligence but the concept of spreading ‘enablement’ throughout the team structure certainly could also be a description of how CQ is developed within business.

(from the article) ‘Among the conclusions the study reaches are:

• The more a company empowers its employees to make decisions, the more likely it is to perform better financially and competitively.
• True enablers use technology to improve collaboration, encourage risk-taking, and optimize decision-making.
• Companies categorizing themselves as “true enablers” are three times more likely to be more profitable than their competitors.
• Compared with other types of firms, companies described as “true enablers” have a higher proportion that are more profitable than their competitors.’ Read on….

Thanks to Ty Franks for this reference.

Biologist Lynn Margulis comments that ‘independence is a political concept, not a biological concept. Everywhere life displays itself as complex, tangled, messy webs of relationships.’ In natural systems disconnection and isolation usually represent dysfunction. The simplest definition of cancer is abnormal or uncontrolled cell division where some part of the body ignores the shared interests of the rest of the body. The isolation has become a manifestation and cause of dysfunction.

Isolation has become a major issue in our society – the well-informed organization provides its employees  a sense of belonging. From there, deeper levels of collaboration can emerge. As Luke Naismith states in his blog ‘Knowledge Futures‘:

One particular point from today was that two of the main things that people want out of work is validation and to feel like they belong.  Validation in the sense that the work outputs that they perform are acknowledged and the ideas that they have for improvement are given a hearing.  Sense of belonging as people at work want to feel part of a team and community.

It’s almost as if we have been trained to perceive interdependence as some sort of ‘weakness.’ Maybe some day we will evolve to the extent that there will be a holiday to celebrate ‘interdependence’ rather than ‘independence’. The holiday could be a public acknowledgement (and celebration) of how interdependent we really are.

Taken from I. Velikovsky’s ‘Worlds In Collision‘:

‘Here is a story, told by …..the Snohomish tribe on Puget Sound, about the origin of the exclamation “Yahu”. “A long time ago, when all the animals were still human beings, the sky was very low. It was so low that the people could not stand erect… They called a meeting together and discussed how they could raise the sky. But they were at a loss to know how to do so. Not one was strong enough to lift the sky. Finally the idea occurred to them that possibly the sky might be moved by the combined efforts of the people, if all of them pushed against it at the same time. But then the question arose of how it would be possible to make all the people exert their efforts at exactly the same moment. For the different peoples would be far away from one another, some would be in this part of the world, others in another part. What signal could be given that all people would lift at precisely the same time? Finally, the word ‘Yahu!’ was invented for this purpose. It was decided that all the people should should ‘Yahu!’ together, and then exert their whole strength in lifting the sky.’

This story was being handed on within the Snohomish tribe hundreds of years ago. It has survived to this day (otherwise, I would not have been able to tell you it) and resonates so aptly with what we should be attending to at this point in time. In ‘Making Peace with the Earth’  the authors point out that by 2100 (at the present rate of change) 50% of all the earths species could be extinct!

In another passage in this intriguing and timely book Javier Perez de Cuellar (former UN Sec-Gen)  ‘for the first time in history, humanity must make political decisions of a normative and legislative character concerning the species and its future. It cannot do so without principles of an ethic of the future, which should become the concern of all and a cornerstone of democracy’. 

So although collaborative intelligence certainly has so  many applications at the micro level (team-building, organizational development, community development etc.) at the macro level it is also a very useful concept. It could be argued that only when we are ready and willing to ‘Yahu’ together as a species will we be able to pull the ship around. In my opinion only when we are willing to ‘Yahu’ at the team level and within organizations will we know what it takes to do it at a broader, more global, level.

As usual I am very interested in hearing what you have to say – feel free to contact me directly by going to my site and emailing me. What do YOU think we could be doing at a team and organizational level to enable the creation of a viable and sustainable world for future generations. Jonas Salk once said that ‘….our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors’.

I have never been one for New Year resolutions. I couldn’t see the significance of a particular time of the year for making changes in myself or my habits. If I identified something that I thought I wanted to change I didn’t really care if it was July or January. I’d make a plan and make the change. This year I happened to have taken an extended break from my business. From a previous post you may be aware that I went to India. During my visit I happened to pick up a copy of J. Krishnamurti’s ‘On Nature and the Environment’. As I was reading this book there was a lot of front page activity in the ‘Times of India‘ about the Bali Climate Conference. From a collaboratively intelligent perspective the task of turning the world around seems a daunting one and this was reflected in the dramatic, eleventh-hour agreements between the nations represented. From the outside one wonders why people are not able to collaborate more effectively on such crucial issues – and I’ll admit to wringing my hands in frustration at the collaborative stupidity (versus intelligence) being exercised.

Then I bumped into this line from Krishnamurti’s wonderful little book:

‘To bring about a transformation in the world, which is the world of my relationship, I must begin with myself’

So it just happens to be the New Year but I am finally getting round to making a ‘resolution’ along with millions of other people. My resolution is to look at all my relationships squarely in the face and ask the question “How can I transform my relationship with the world?” rather than “How can I transform the world?”. That’s where I am starting from for this brand new year.

I wish all those that visit this blog an exciting and fulfilling 2008. May we all learn to practice our collaborative intelligence, especially because this seems to be a very important point in human history.

Anyone who read my book ‘Teaching an Anthill to Fetch‘ will know that I have a fondness for these little critters. In my view they offer a promise of how selfless we may actually become as a species- given enough time. An article in the NY Times is a fascinating peek into the ways ants collaborate for the benefit of a the entire nest. From the article…

The reason may be that the ants have had a lot more time to adapt to living in big groups. “We haven’t evolved in the societies we currently live in,” Dr. Couzin said.

In fact thought they don’t mention it in the article – ants have had a lot more practice. They have been living in colonies for over 40 million years. So we have a little work to do to catch up on with them it would seem from this article.

From ‘Teaching an Anthill to Fetch‘…..

Collaborative Intelligence (CQ) is defined as the capacity to harness the intelligence in networks of relationships.