From IQ to CO-Q: Developing the Adaptable Learning Organisation – by Collaboration Intelligence
Change and Disruption
The abbreviation “IQ” was coined by the psychologist William Stern for the German term Intelligenzquotient for ‘scoring method’ for intelligence tests in 1912. Over one hundred years later we’re about to move the goalposts well and truly into the 21st. century. Before we talk more about intelligence.
Traditional hierarchies and processes can be thought of from two perspectives: As an ‘operating system’ dictating the extents that the ‘people system’ are able to operate within: People and teams operate as the foundation upon which the structure of the organization rests, managers sending corporate or organisational strategies, plans, time schedules, direction on down from the penthouse suite to the team leaders and teams on the floors below, who then implement that strategy and convert it into organizational benefit.
The problem is, the strategies being developed in the penthouse suite often fail to reflect the disruptive environment the organisation is a part of and relies on for its markets or existence. Information is kept specific to the team domain, meaning it doesn’t get shared or is able to cross-pollinate other team’s ideas and understanding keeping the organisation inflexible and unable to adapt to the changing environment.
Developing the adaptive learning organisation
This means a business or organisation us able to develop an internal dynamic operatability – working not the way they want to but working the way they need to, since the collective aspect means the test lies in fit for purpose over and above any persons individual purpose. This is the adaptive organisation actually learning, acting and working as an intelligent organism. The result is faster reaction times, increasing speed and adaptive agility – so agents and teams able to influence their organisation and organisations strategic intelligence with the capability to constantly redefine.
What we end up with is an evolutionary networks motivated by and contributing to central CO-Q drivers. These are the engines moving minds forward by interaction, aligned understanding. In CO-Q, people contribute to each other’s task as well as their own having influence on strategy and direction that is now receptive to the ‘minds in the field’: By linking people to process through CO-Q.
Top image credit: Hand-eye coordination by Liam York
