Collective Intelligence at Work. E-Book

Sergio Vergara Venegas

• Herausgeber: Ediciones UC
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 222

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Much has been written about the climate and its importance, but very little about how to understand the processes that operate on the basis of the good results of a climate survey or a positive and energizing work environment. Under the assumption that the climate results are the reflection of underlying variables, the author develops the application of the concept of collective intelligence, that is, how a group of people can generate greater joint value in the creation of a work environment that is a contribution to business and management. With an outstanding professional career in the areas of human resources and marketing in transnational companies, the author is currently a consultant and academic and, therefore, offers not only a cutting-edge theory in organizational climate, but also a series of concrete tools that They can be used by the reader, measuring instruments and a control panel to generate a work environment that produces sustainably positive results. This book is aimed at all people who seek to improve the work environment in companies or organizations, especially those who lead and lead teams and understand the positive impact of people's well-being in the management of companies. "To manage the climate of a company or organization, reading this book and analyzing its recommendations is an essential starting point." Nicholas Majluf

Leseprobe

EDICIONES UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE CHILE

Vicerrectoría de Comunicaciones y Educación Continua

Alameda 390, Santiago, Chile

[email protected]

ediciones.uc.cl

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE AT WORK

A New Way of Understanding and Managing Organizations to Align People’s Well-Being and Driving Business Results

Sergio Vergara Venegas

ISBN digital: 978-956-14-2872-0

Diagramación digital: ebooks Patagonia

www.ebookspatagonia.com

[email protected]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue by Nicolás Majluf

INTRODUCTION

Collective Intelligence

Why Work on Organizational Climate?

Trying to Turn a “Soft” Topic into a “Hard” One

The Influence (and Pressure) Of Social Ranking on the Management of Organizational Climate

The Evolutionary Model of Organizational Climate

CHAPTER 1COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

Can We Learn to Be Collectively Smarter?

Key Concepts from Chapter 1

CHAPTER 2THE ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE IS A RELATIONSHIP

First Principle of the Evolutionary Model: The Organizational Climate Is a Relationship

Understanding the Management of Organizational Climate as the Management of a Relationship

Organizational Climate versus Organizational Culture: What Is the Difference?

Tool 1: Self-Assessment Survey for Middle Managers and Collaborators

Key Concepts from Chapter 2

CHAPTER 3FROM THE MOST VISIBLE TO THE LEAST VISIBLE

Second Principle of the Evolutionary Model: What Is Most Visible Is Not Necessarily the Deepest Issue

The Bottom of the Iceberg

Tool 2: Climate Contribution Index of Key Work Activities

Tool 3: Climate Contribution Map of Key Work Activities

Key Concepts from Chapter 3

CHAPTER 4HOW EVERYONE CAN CONTRIBUTE TO ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE IN THEIR OWN WAY

Third Principle of the Evolutionary Model: As in Any Relationship, Managing the Organizational Climate Requires Actions from Different Roles

Senior Management Role

Middle Management Role (leaders)

Individual Role

Tool 4: The Action Plan Model for the Organizational Climate Management That Creates Maturity

Subsystems implicit in the roles

Cases of Dysfunctional Dynamics

Key Concepts from Chapter 4

CHAPTER 5THE CONCEPT OF MATURITY IN ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE

Fourth Principle of the Evolutionary Model: If Relationships Mature, So Does the Organizational Climate Management

Four Stages in the Organizational Climate Management Maturity Pathway

Stage 1: Bewilderment and Frustration

Stage 2: Activism

Stage 3: Understanding

Stage 4: Managing

Key Concepts from Chapter 5

CHAPTER 6MATURING THE ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE MANAGEMENT

The Levers to Make Organizational Climate Mature

Key Levers to Make Organizational Climate Management Mature (the Dos and Don’ts)

Levers between Stages 1 and 2, from “Bewilderment and Frustration” to “Activism”

Tool 5: Meeting Guidelines for Reviewing the Results of the Organizational Climate Survey

Levers Between Stages 2 and 3. From “Activism” to “Understanding”

Levers Between Level 3 and 4. From “Understanding” to “Managing”

Levers to Support Level 4 “Managing”

The Role of Human Capital Management

The Roles for Sustainable Organizational Climate Management

Structure of an Integrated Organizational Management

The Role of Managers

Tool 6: Maturity Diagnostic Instrument

Key Concepts from Chapter 6

CHAPTER 7THE MINIMUM LEVELS IN ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE MANAGEMENT

Fifth Principle of the Evolutionary Model: The Hierarchical Ranking of Organizational Climate Dimensions

Key Concepts from Chapter 7

CHAPTER 8WORK DYNAMICS AND PRACTICES

Before Changing Practices, Let’s Understand the Dynamics

Improving Practices Strengthens Dynamics

Examples of Good Practices to Improve Organizational Climate

Tool 7: Assessment Matrix of Organizational Climate Improvement Practices

Key Concepts from Chapter 8

CHAPTER 9THE ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE INTERVENTION CONTROL PANEL

Why Have a Control Panel for the Organizational Climate Management Plan?

Control Panel of the Evolutionary Model of Organizational Climate Management

I. Management Model

I.1. Management Practices

I.2. Organizational Structure

I.3. Systems and Processes

I.4. Infrastructure

I.5. Compensation and Benefits

I.6. Business and Human Capital Policies

II. Culture

II.1. Implicit and Explicit Values

II.2. Group and Inter-Area Dynamics

III. Teams

III.1. Maturity of Climate Management in the Area

III.2. Climate Practices Installed

IV. Individuals

IV.1. Profile of the Critical Mass of People

IV.2. Work Maturity of the Critical Mass

Tool 8: Control Panel Checklist

From the Control Panel to the Organizational Climate Management Plan

Tool 9: Climate Maturity Management Plan

CHAPTER 10INTERVENING WITH THE EVOLUTIONARY MODEL

EPILOGUEORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE AND SOCIAL MATURITY

Bibliography

To my children FELIPE and NATALIA, with whom, out of love, I learned to speak languages I did not know. To CARMEN, my wife, for so much, for everything.

FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

There are some books that are of value for being able to summarize some problems that require a specialized technical view. There are books that stand out for their innovation and contribution, and others that are ahead of their time and pose questions for the future. Finally, there are books that manage to interpret the sign of the times and formulate perspectives or tools that are an adaptive response to the current challenges of different disciplines.

It is rare to find a book that is able to bring together the best of these challenges in a single volume. Doing so in a timely manner, in the current difficult times we live in, is a relevant fact that is worth knowing, studying and applying.

The book you are holding in your hands, Collective Intelligence, by Chilean consultant Sergio Vergara, ticks all these boxes. It is the result of mature reflection on specific and long-standing experiences that have transcended the country’s borders.

What emerged as a result of the author’s work with hundreds of organizations and companies of different sizes and complexity, and from different areas of economic activity, and also from his work with the public sector, can today be considered a necessary response to the challenges posed by the social, health and economic crises we’ve been facing for the last two years.

His proposal is so powerful and bold that it translates the best of the economic-business perspectives with the collaborative, dialogical and transformational perspectives that give us new tools for the building of organizational purposes.

Best of all, it provides us with the tools to operate in times of crisis and in the transformation produced by these tools in our organizations and teams.

With deep conviction, but above all with great generosity, this book -originally written in Spanish, in the long strip of the southern part of the American continent called Chile- is a conceptual map and a toolbox that can accelerate the processes of change and systemic transformation that we require.

At times when global citizenship demands new perspectives, when traditional ways of living together, production and working are challenged, at times when the social contract that gave governance to countries, organizations and human groups seems to be under fire and unsuitable to respond to the current times, Collective Intelligence may be the basis of the new modus vivendi of the organizational climate that we urgently need to develop within our institutions.

JORGE SANHUEZA-RAHMER

Dean of Psychology, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

Santiago -Chile, June 2021

FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

When I originally wrote this book, the main concept I sought to capture was the challenge faced by organizations and companies in integrating individual intelligences into a greater whole, what I call “developing maturity.” As this book explains, this is essential to avoid becoming ineffective in solving the problems related to life and progress.

At that moment, many clients, faculty, entrepreneurs and leaders with whom I spoke to, were not ready to accept the need to collaborate and appreciate the work required to address these joint challenges. Many associated the concept of collective intelligence exclusively with technology or teamwork.

Six years have passed and as this book is being published in English, society is facing important changes that reflect the need for a participatory approach to bring about maturity.

Organizations are not isolated from society -where their collaborators live and coexist- they are influenced by it and in turn influence society. The world has been shifting towards social logics that are being expressed through social networks, which in turn have catalyzed the expression of positions and evidenced polarizing differences. In the United States, a mob of demonstrators in favor of outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol; in Latin America and around the world, social, environmental and business processes are called into question socially, where the idea that what is legal is not necessarily what is fair, became a slogan for all those who demand greater justice, equity, inclusion, diversity, etc.

In addition to this, the pandemic has shown us the world is interconnected for better or for worse and that we need to act together.

In the world of work, institutions and individuals are reinventing themselves to work from home, generating a paradigm shift that incorporates technologies that enhance collaborative processes. Online learning, telemedicine and especially e-commerce have also undergone an accelerated growth, anticipating what was expected to happen in the future. As the vaccine became a reality, the debate on how to return to work began.

The pandemic showed that the reduction and in some cases the elimination of commuting time was one of the most valued aspects of lockdown periods. According to surveys and interviews, parents stated that even though they felt the stress of having to help their children in their studies, they got back two, three or more hours a day to be with their families or just for themselves.

Many leaders expect to come back to the traditional face-to-face office environment as the population is widely vaccinated, while others think that it should be a mix of working styles, taking advantage of the lessons learned from remote work and allowing people to work from home some days of the week.

This dilemma is a good example of the type of challenges that require a collective approach. Problems are cross-cutting and addressed by not one, but several teams and areas that do not necessarily have the same view or even share the same information. They also involve different roles at different hierarchical levels, which implies a multi-appraisal, i.e. what is important for each one differs significantly.

Increasingly, companies and institutions face challenges of this type: multiple areas, several hierarchical levels, asymmetric information regarding problems, added to the scarce availability of spaces for inter-area participatory discussion and the urgent need to develop relational skills to address challenges where it is important to not suppress differences, but to build on them.

Agile methodologies, which are widely used today to make transformations, require this type of approach, as they often consider issues that cut across multiple areas.

A good shipping system will not work if the reality of the departments involved is not considered, for which it is not enough to gather the teams, give them a presentation and spend the last ten minutes asking questions. We need to understand how the change in processes and technology affects their work dynamics, so that the necessary adjustments can be made for the project to be successful. Also, in the event that some of the groups involved show resistance or a low-level of commitment to the initiative, we need to understand what perspective they have on the subject and from what information they are basing their judgments on about the project in question.

If we do this, we can generate a dialogue that will allow them to be included into building solutions. It is not just a matter of “selling” them the project as is usually done, because in this perspective the implementing group has in mind only its own vision of the problem, which they tend to push without paying attention to the signals that allow them to anticipate problems that will blow-up later, when the project is implemented.

This approach is not only an intellectual challenge, but also an emotional one, which requires strategies to understand the level of maturity and shared understanding of the group involved, in order to design an effective strategy.

The traditional approach to change management is modified by incorporating tools to ensure that differences are put at the service of building a better solution.

In just a few years, society has moved, and companies need to recognize which challenges require a more transversal approach such as collective intelligence, among which is the work environment, but also any transversal project where the participation of the involved and dissimilar areas is relevant for success. The challenge is -what this book calls- building maturity. That is to say, finding the keys that allow the group involved in the problem to develop a shared understanding with greater levels of speed and agility more quickly and smoothly of what is really being sought to be solved. This begins in the act of understanding the perspective of the other parties from their subjectivity, recognizing why they look at the problem the way they do, where the experience and understanding of each area is valid, beyond whether or not it is correct. This allows to generate relationships of mutual legitimacy, changing the focus from the implementing group and the group “subject of change” to one of co-construction. This does not imply that we have to give each party what they want, because what we seek to create is not a transactional relationship, but the awareness that we are a community, and that only the understanding of the underlying problem will help us to move towards effective solutions. Thus each participant in a collective process has the challenge of becoming a “connecting neuron” that seeks to understand others and then helps the group reach a perspective on how the different points of view explain why the current dynamics occur as they do. When the group is able to see how they affect each other and what information was not known or visible to them, they are able to see how it affects the others and this creates a shared feeling and commitment to move together.

The approach to the work environment is therefore a reflection of how an organization learns to generate collective intelligence, to create an organization that learns to learn according to how the world and the society that surrounds us is changing and how we are a part of it. A capacity that, in the present and in the future, increasingly full of diversity and complexity, becomes fundamental.

Sergio Vergara, June 2021

FOREWORD

Building collective intelligence in the organization: A new way of understanding and managing the organizational climate in order to align the well-being of people with the management of the company

I have spent many years studying and practicing in the vast world that is management. I started as an engineer looking at management from the mathematical models and well-structured problems of operational research. Knowing how to deal with these issues is crucial in the operation of the modern world. Without them, airplanes could not take off and large production plants could not operate.

But management is not limited to the technical, economic, commercial, legal, and so many other aspects of the “formal” world of management. These aspects are approached from the sciences, from quantitative and mathematical perspectives. This has become such a relevant approach that we often hear that “without measurement, there is no management.”

More than twenty years ago, I took on the course “Organization and Behavior in the Company,” which we offer to the students in the School of Engineering at Universidad Católica. This course seeks to raise our students’ awareness of management issues that are part of the “subtle” world, i.e., issues that have to do with people and their interactions, what conditions their behavior, what moves them to commit and act in the world of organizations and companies.

This is a very different approach. It is based on social sciences and ethics, psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology and even neuroscience, whose progress in recent years has shed light on our behavior and reactions. It is also a central view, because management is based on the delicate fabric of people and their relationships. Management has to do with mobilizing people, coordinating their behavior and building a common project that inspires their enthusiasm. In the words of the author, “organizations have a purpose that requires the coordinated effort of individuals and teams.”

The focus of this book is the management of organizational climate, which is precisely the result of our interactions and efforts to self-coordinate, an emerging reality that arises from our capabilities, relationships, and treatment. Therefore, we cannot expect an expert to tell us what to do. This goes against the very nature of what organizational climate is. How can we expect an outsider to give us a recipe that will simply fix everything? There are no recipes. We should not go around thinking that it is enough to be a “good person” or to “maintain good relations.” This is a much more complex issue than that because the organizational climate is something we all build together, and it affects us all.

This book stems from the importance of the work environment in organizations. A good organizational climate leads to good performance and satisfaction with the work that is performed. According to the author, this means “people have a good time being productive at work, that the work itself involves dynamics that are motivating, energizing and/or generate learning.” The organizational climate is like a link between people’s behavior and the organization’s performance.

Managing the organizational climate leads to progress towards greater maturity in the way people relate and work, and this, in turn, allows the organization to advance in a more efficient and sustainable manner towards the results it has set out to achieve. There is a virtuous circle because the good results of the organization will, in turn, be a factor of improvement in the organizational climate. Hence, its importance and the need to place the management of the organizational climate in the sights of an organization’s top management because it is through the climate that it is possible to connect the “world of relations” with the “world of results.”

But who has actually seen the organizational climate? In which supermarket or store is it sold? It is one of those variables that we invent in the world of social sciences to refer to something that we feel, understand, and need, but that has no physical reality. We call these realities “latent variables,” which we can only perceive indirectly. Who has actually been able to see organizational climate, trust, or motivation? Yet anyone can clearly and unambiguously tell whether the organizational climate is good or bad, whether or not they trust someone else or are motivated. It is like love, no one has seen it, and yet we feel its presence and impact. This complex phenomenon leaves scientists speechless, but poets come to the rescue. According to the author, “the construct we call organizational climate is not something ‘in itself,’ but a way to name and measure the product created in the interaction of the different parties.”

Sergio Vergara invites us to enter this mysterious and unknown world. The reason for this is clear: if we want to do things well, we need a good organizational climate. We do not know what organizational climate is, but we do know that it is important, that we build it together and, when we have achieved an uplifting and positive climate, it contributes to our enthusiasm for our work.

Even though organizational climate cannot be seen, felt, or smelled, it can be perceived. To “measure” it, we can use surveys that measure people’s perceptions. As put by the author: “Organizational climate is an indicator of the degree of well-being of people as well as the internal environment and the degree of satisfaction and energy arising from the work.” Measurements are valuable because the results provide insight that can be used for management. However, we must be aware of the way in which these surveys are answered and their meaning, since they are not neutral instruments (like a thermometer) but respond to people’s perceptions. There is also the possibility of them being used as a means of “sending a message to the boss” or “seeking retaliation,” distorting what was really intended to be measured. According to the author, “if people remain silent, air out their problems in the hallway and use the survey as a protest mechanism, they are not helping the process to mature.”

The basic question is what to do and how to react to the results of these surveys. This is what organizational climate management is all about. Here is where the book opens like a treasure trove of wisdom. The book is the result of and expresses the author’s study, reflection and practice. In it, he gives great recommendations, provides diverse and useful tools, as well as numerous and enlightening examples.

The core of Vergara’s model is that the management of organizational climate can reach different levels of maturity. If you are in the primary stage, the relationships between people have not even been established. Attempts to establish this relationship produce “bewilderment and frustration.” They can lead -I would add- to conflict and the collapse of the relationship. The first steps must be taken to open paths of rapprochement. This is when social activities, breakfasts, sports afternoons, and the many other ways that have been found to bring coworkers closer together, pay off. According to the author, this is the “activism” stage. It is certainly a good first step, but it only scratches the surface. It is necessary to move “from social relations to work relations,” where the people involved share their interpretations and ways of doing things. There is not always agreement, but there is room to talk, to have “courageous conversations” and move towards consensus. This is the “understanding” stage. But to conquer the summit, we have to take a step further. We must seek a total integration of understandings and wills in order to do a good job and also have a good time. Interaction has advanced from the more superficial layers of a casual relationship, of a purely social or legal and contractual nature, to the deeper layers, in which it is necessary to understand what is being done and the meaning of the activity, to have a clear appreciation of the contribution that each person is making. It is not just a matter of having a positive environment, but of preparing oneself to do things well and to be passionate about the work.

When you reach this stage, you have gone from a group of people with barely any relationship, to a highly cohesive team, which has managed to create a reality that transcends them all. The author calls this “collective intelligence,” which includes organizational learning, a shared emotion and commitment to the common project. This is the “managing” stage, which is characterized by the achievement of a common vision, a deeper way of approaching the work together, and the ability to handle conflicts without deteriorating the relationship.

Organizational climate is, then, a reality that we cannot observe, but that has a tremendous impact on the organization’s performance and must therefore be at the center of the management’s attention. The basic recommendation is to manage the organizational climate in such a way as to move from the most superficial levels of the relationship to the deepest, from the purely social to what is more proper and genuine of the work itself. The road ahead is a minefield, because no matter how much care we put into the relationship, we are still going to have conflicts and disagreements. We are going to make mistakes and fall into contradictions. Many times, we are not going to realize it until the damage to the relationship has already been done. Hence, all prevention is of little value. This is also why Chapter 6 is so valuable, because it warns us of the positive and negative behaviors (the dos and don’ts) for each level of maturity.

Another recommendation of great relevance is to recognize that there are different roles in the management of the organizational climate, and that each person must assume their role, since all contribute to the climate that ultimately prevails in the organization. Senior managers must be role models and define the rules of the game. Middle managers (or leaders), who are in direct contact with people lower down in the organization and are key in relationships, must act as channels of communication. Finally, individuals must show a positive disposition to be part of the team and participate. Otherwise, all efforts to achieve a good organizational climate will fail. These roles change as one moves up the organizational climate maturity scale.

In short, those responsible for an organization must make their best efforts to manage the organizational climate. This means moving towards deeper and deeper levels of maturity and ensuring that each person in the organization assumes their due responsibility, at every moment and in every circumstance, in the effort to build, ideally, “the best organizational climate in the world.”

Reading this book and analyzing its recommendations is an essential starting point to managing the organizational climate of a company or organization.

NICOLAS MAJLUF

Professor

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Monday, December 8, 2014

INTRODUCTION

Collective intelligence

Just as science has proven that intelligent people are not those with the most neurons, but those whose neurons are best interconnected, so it is in organizations.

In his book Las culturas fracasadas, el talento y la estupidez en las sociedades, Marina (2010) points out that shared intelligence is the result of the interaction between individual intelligences, since human intelligence is structurally and functionally social. For this author, culture is the result of social intelligence and the answer to the essential problems of life. Therefore, an intelligent society is that which is capable of generating good solutions to universal problems, such as life, production, power, the relationship with the community, conflicts and the family, among others. In contrast, he considers societies “stupid” when they create more problems than they solve, destroy community capital and weaken the vital possibilities of their citizens. This can happen because of what he calls intellectual fracture, which is the distance caused by the inability to articulate or make individual intelligence and its interests compatible with shared intelligence.

De Ugarte (2010), a Spanish economist who publishes his books online for free, has highlighted the power of an interconnected society, which today has resources that allow to find a common space for individual intelligences and generating collective spaces:

We live in a highly interconnected world, where interconnectivity has increased at unthinkable speeds, as Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google pointed out: