C Factor: a collective IQ

Today, com­pan­ies are con­fron­ted with increas­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and dis­rupt­ive changes. Faced with rising unpre­dict­ab­il­ity and com­plex­ity, most fight to sur­vive by redu­cing pro­duc­tion costs or try­ing to obtain new mar­ket shares. Yet, most lead­ers are still ill-pre­pared to handle the unknown.

In this con­text, how can they then give mean­ing to the often-para­dox­ic­al require­ments, expec­ted of them? The over­whelm­ing flood of mod­ern oxy­mor­ons like “prof­it­ab­il­ity” and “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment”, “val­ues” and “worth”, “open innov­a­tion” and “com­pet­it­ive­ness”, or even “social and envir­on­ment­al respons­ib­il­ity” and the “gen­er­a­tion of wealth”? A genu­ine revolu­tion of the social archi­tec­ture presid­ing over ana­lys­is, decision-mak­ing and action is needed to offer new ways of effi­ciently resolv­ing these issues. 

In my opin­ion, we must estab­lish a true col­lab­or­at­ive spir­it with­in com­pan­ies. To do so, new organ­isa­tion­al struc­tures should increase their depend­ence on col­lect­ive intel­li­gence. Because, as Eur­ip­ides said, “none of us know what we all know, togeth­er” ¹.

The era of pyr­am­ids is over

For stub­born indi­vidu­als dis­in­clined to admit the import­ance of the bene­fits of the col­lect­ive, the Cov­id-19 crisis provides addi­tion­al evid­ence on the advant­ages of cooper­a­tion. Around the world, epi­demi­olo­gists, doc­tors, research­ers, and engin­eers, are work­ing togeth­er tire­lessly to man­age the flow of data sur­round­ing the pan­dem­ic to mod­el the spread of the vir­us, pre­dict the impact of pos­sible inter­ven­tions or devel­op bio­med­ic­al solu­tions to this health issue.

Open-access and reusable codes were exchanged by labor­at­or­ies across the globe. The world of research and innov­a­tion has under­gone an unpre­ced­en­ted frenzy of col­lab­or­a­tion and pro­duc­tion. In oth­er words, pyr­am­id­al organ­isa­tions that sub­sist here and there in decision-mak­ing bod­ies ruled by a rela­tion­ship of sub­or­din­a­tion will soon be over. Nev­er­the­less, we must acknow­ledge that these ancient (and some­times inscrut­able) dog­mat­ic pyr­am­id­al organ­isa­tion­al struc­tures forged on author­it­at­ive argu­ments are very effi­cient in spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances – when the envir­on­ment in which they evolved remains stable.

How, then, do we incite col­lect­ive intelligence? 

By first object­ing to the idea that intel­li­gence deteri­or­ates as soon as we come togeth­er to think and decide. Some might believe that indi­vidu­als are the only agents of intel­li­gence, where­as groups show stu­pid­ity. Let us remind them that the cog­nit­ive per­form­ance of an indi­vidu­al relies first and fore­most on the use of tools that are either sym­bol­ic (lan­guage, writ­ing, etc.) or mater­i­al (cal­cu­lat­ing and meas­ur­ing instru­ments, energy, trans­port­a­tion, etc.). Each and every one of us is gif­ted these tools by oth­er people through cul­ture and edu­ca­tion: we did not invent them ourselves.

In fact, most of the know­ledge brought forth by those who pre­tend that intel­li­gence is purely indi­vidu­al comes from the col­lect­ive. Indeed, this know­ledge could not have been built or per­fec­ted without long chains of intergen­er­a­tion­al trans­mis­sion through fam­ily, school or media. Homo sapi­ens inven­ted the concept of “cumu­lat­ive cul­tur­al evol­u­tion”, the phe­nomen­on by which know­ledge is built and improved over time via social learn­ing and cooper­a­tion. Today, we can meas­ure the bene­fits of this col­lect­ive way of think­ing through its deriv­at­ives: demo­cracy, com­merce, art, tech­no­logy, or sci­ence ².

From the indi­vidu­al to the group 

How can we fully har­ness the resources of an indi­vidu­al – who inher­ently lives and works in a group – to bring out a form of col­lect­ive intel­li­gence? First, col­lect­ive intel­li­gence refers to the cog­nit­ive skills of a soci­ety, a com­munity or a group and their abil­ity to adapt to change. 

This form of col­lect­ive think­ing, far from con­form­ism and stand­ard­isa­tion which are oppos­i­tions of change, brings into exist­ence new cre­ations to enrich our her­it­age, espe­cially under the impulse of a sense of oblig­a­tion urging us to enrich this leg­acy. Col­lect­ive intel­li­gence is only fer­tile when it struc­tures or con­jug­ates sin­gu­lar­it­ies, by facil­it­at­ing dia­logue and act­ive listen­ing, cer­tainly not by elim­in­at­ing dif­fer­ences, or worse yet, by silen­cing dis­sid­ents ³.

Finally, it should be noted that we must study a body of know­ledge before we can enrich it. Know­ledge of the past is the basis for invent­ing and build­ing a col­lect­ive future and for appre­ci­at­ing the degree of intel­li­gence of a human organ­isa­tion, wheth­er it be a com­pany, a gov­ern­ment, an admin­is­tra­tion or an asso­ci­ation. Memory is the corner­stone of col­lect­ive intelligence!

A col­lect­ive IQ? 

If we can meas­ure indi­vidu­al intel­li­gence in terms of per­form­ance at dif­fer­ent tasks, and thus derive an indi­vidu­al “intel­li­gence quo­tient” (the fam­ous IQ), then shouldn’t we be able to assess the intel­li­gence of a group of indi­vidu­als through its abil­ity to per­form col­lect­ive work? Research­ers have thus designed a “C factor” for col­lect­ive intel­li­gence that can be used to meas­ure group per­form­ance based on vari­ous tasks ⁴.

No need to gath­er people with a high IQ to max­im­ise the col­lect­ive intel­li­gence of a group. What really mat­ters is the diversity of social sens­it­iv­it­ies, skill sets and edu­ca­tion­al back­grounds of its mem­bers, as well as the abil­ity to effi­ciently inter­act and to speak in an equit­able way dur­ing dis­cus­sions. In oth­er words, an intel­li­gent group is not a group made of intel­li­gent indi­vidu­als. Rather, it con­sists of dif­fer­ent indi­vidu­als inter­act­ing on the basis of equity and reci­pro­city, driv­en by shared mor­al val­ues. The authors con­clude: “it seems easi­er to increase the intel­li­gence of a group than that of an indi­vidu­al. Could we increase col­lect­ive intel­li­gence, for example through the use of bet­ter online col­lab­or­at­ive tools?” ⁵.

Self-organ­ising com­munit­ies have been at the heart of the “open-source” world, giv­ing rise to massive pro­jects such as Wiki­pe­dia or Linux. Today, con­front­ing the com­plex­ity of prob­lems with a diversity of skills is an obvi­ous course of action in prob­lem solv­ing on a glob­al scale and in inter­dis­cip­lin­ary con­texts. Cre­at­ing a bal­anced ratio of power in the work envir­on­ment will only be pos­sible by rebuild­ing the found­a­tions of author­ity. As was the case, for example, when the fam­ily and house­hold struc­tures under­went changes in the ‘50s, some beha­viours nowadays appear inap­pro­pri­ate in the pro­fes­sion­al world because they are det­ri­ment­al to the emer­gence of col­lect­ive intelligence.

I hope that these few lines will have con­vinced our read­ers on the need to estab­lish rela­tion­ships based on equity, reci­pro­city or the sense of oblig­a­tion in com­pan­ies, but also in schools and in all human com­munit­ies – but a few of the key factors favour­ing the expres­sion of a col­lect­ive IQ.