Organizational Intelligence: Raise The Bar Of Your Company
Updated: May 2, 2023
If you ignore the development of a good culture, Ma believes, you’re likely to end up with a hostile one, where employees aren’t motivated and are instead doing just the bare minimum. A great culture means a great company and a great future. – Jack Ma
Let’s face it, change and complexity are an inherent part of life and especially in building a successful business.
Most people are familiar with the concept of individual I.Q. but business leaders are not as familiar with the idea of organizational intelligence. Which is the collective I.Q of the company as a whole.
ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
A high degree of organizational intelligence means a company possesses the required knowledge and capacity to think and adapt strategically to the market’s changing conditions.
Think of it like driving down the road and debris comes flying at you from the vehicle in front of you.
Do you want someone driving your car that is indecisive and doesn’t compose themselves well under pressure? Or someone who is great at quickly making calculated decisions while staying calm and collected?
I know I would prefer the latter. Imagine having an entire company that operates decisively in a calm way. That is a business with a high degree of organizational intelligence.
They can adapt to new technologies and conditions that impact their business environment. Then leverage them to become successful.
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ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: HOW CAN YOUR BUSINESS IMPROVE EXISTING ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE?
Healthy businesses that see long-term profitability, while having a lasting positive impact on the lives of their customers, employees, and stakeholders work hard to improve every single day.
Here are a few steps any company can take today in order to boost their organization's intelligence.
1. Hire People with Higher Levels of Intelligence – Both Technical and Emotional 2. Understand How the People Already Working for You are Wired – Behavior Testing 3. Implement an Employee Development Program – Improve Capabilities
ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: HIRE PEOPLE WITH HIGHER LEVELS OF INTELLIGENCE (TECHNICAL & EMOTIONAL)
The interview process is often filled with turmoil in most businesses. Especially small and medium-sized companies.
The reason?
They don’t have the resources to hire full-time HR staff. Instead, they have managers who are not the best at discovering the emotional intelligence capacity within a candidate, in addition to the technical capabilities of potential hires.
They often decide on “who they like” and not who is equipped mentally and technically to fill a role.
Companies like Google are notorious for asking questions that don’t seem at all related to the role at hand.
However, they are designed to discover hidden pieces of the fundamental nature of a person’s capabilities and mental processes.
Making a list of the behavioral traits that align with your organization’s core values is a great place to begin, then creating a system for flushing these qualities out of potential hires.
ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: UNDERSTAND HOW THE PEOPLE WORKING FOR YOU ARE WIRED – (BEHAVIOR TESTING)
Behavioral analysis is an essential aspect of organizational intelligence. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses.
Some individuals have stronger technical skills and are introverts. Others possess people skills and have a more extroverted personality. There are even people who possess characteristics of both.
As a company, investing in the discovery and documentation of these differences, so the culture can adapt its methods of communicating, and decision making is essential.
Many companies conduct these tests and any business thinking seriously about cultivating a strong culture of organizational intelligence should consider them.
Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates runs each of his employees through the Myers Briggs personality test.
Bridgewater takes it one step further by creating what Ray Dalio calls “baseball cards” for his employees that highlight their strengths and weaknesses in the workplace.
Some leaders and employees probably feel uncomfortable at the thought of exposing their inner weaknesses publicly within an organization.
However, in a culture that supports honesty and open-mindedness, it can be liberating for employees to know they can be counted on for their strengths and know who to seek out to compensate for their weaknesses.
ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: IMPLEMENT AN EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
Based on the knowledge gained from personality testing or even thoughtful analysis of the technical and emotional capabilities an organization’s employees, we can begin implementing a plan to develop the skills necessary to succeed.
This is where an employee development plan can boost overall organizational intelligence.
People often feel overworked. Not because they genuinely have too much on their plate (although in some organizations this is the case).
Often it's because they are required to reach too far out of their area of competency to fill a role that is best filled by a new employee or someone else within the organization.
True organizational intelligence, factors in detail, the technical responsibilities and emotional characteristics required for each role within the company to operate healthily.
Then focuses resources to bring individual ability (and the organizational ability) up to speed or bring in people who can effectively take on the workload.
In our experience working with businesses, we’ve found our one-on-one time spent with individuals to be an extremely insightful experience.
We start by finding the root cause of what truly holds people back from achieving their potential.
Then design manageable steps to move them towards a higher level of capability or find ways to shift the business system to support company goals and raise organizational intelligence as a whole.
ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN FOR YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE?
“If you ignore the development of a good culture, Ma believes, you’re likely to end up with a hostile one, where employees aren’t motivated and are instead doing just the bare minimum. A great culture means a great company and a great future.”
We believe fostering a culture that invests in achieving a high level of organizational intelligence, both emotionally and technically will drive an exceptional return on investment.
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