Excerpts Organizational Intelligence The World of Theory Intelligence by Design The Learning Loop Hearts and Minds New Attributes of Behavior Preludes Questions Sections

Questions for the chapters of The Intelligence Advantage Questions for chapter: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 Questions for chapter 1 Where is intelligence already manifesting itself in your corporation? Where is it least present? What is occurring in the corporation that indicates a lack of intelligence and a lack of understanding of intelligence? What factors most inhibit intelligence? What is the cost in the areas of creativity, aliveness, and satisfaction that lack of intelligent design and related practices cause? What would be the biggest payoff in developing organizational intelligence? Where are the biggest apparent risks? Where do we not want more intelligence in the system? Where do we want "hardwired intelligence" rather than human intelligence? |to top| Questions for chapter 2 What theories are the basis of your corporation's design? What theories regarding people and production organize your work flow? What theories are indicated by your approaches to research, production, new methods and technological innovation? What few simple theories form the basis of your approach to your particular business or industry? What theories are active in your corporation regarding competition, co-operation and relationships? What theories guide your corporation in regard to the marketplace? What theories organize your strategic thinking? What theories do you have about motivation and why people work? Look at your practices, structures and actual operations to test your answers against the current structures and results. |to top| Questions for chapter 3 How do you currently talk about your business? Will this way of speaking lead to the future you want or will it merely continue to extend what is already in existence? What language patterns exist in your corporation that inhibit the expansion of its values, goals, and possibilities? Do the functions, specialties and levels of authority in your corporation have a grammar that maintains exclusion? What specific words and grammars keep them in place? How would you like the people of your corporation to think about the company? Does your way of speaking encourage that way of thinking in others, or not? Examine your everyday way of speaking, not just the special occasions when you are attempting to get a message across. Is the language that you use forming and strengthening a sense of community, or is it undermining it? |to top| Questions for chapter 4 What structures of your corporation can be accounted for by frozen accidents? What processes, beliefs, rules, etc. are thought to be necessary, but are not obviously useful? What does everybody know, but nobody say? When was the last time you created an opportunity to be challenged -- and then did something with the response? What are the five oldest policies or procedures that have remained largely unchanged? (Change them.) What forum does your corporation provide for challenging the way things are done? What support is provided for those who want to challenge things? What are the current practices in your corporation that create opposition for those challenging the current interpretation of the past? Do people get offended or defensive when ideas or practices are challenged? Does the language used to challenge reflect curiosity, or righteousness and attack? |to top| Questions for chapter 5 What does intelligence mean in the context of a corporation? What are measures of intelligence? How can we assess how the number, kind and quality of connections contribute to, or inhibit the growth of intelligence? In your corporation, what situations occur because of the application of an inappropriate or obsolete design? What are the design principles out of which that design emerges? What are the possible alternatives to these design principles? What new type of designs could be expected to emerge out of these principles? |to top| Questions for chapter 6 In what ways does your current corporation invite or urge leadership? Are these requests aimed at specific individuals who would be leaders or do they enable leadership to emerge in many places? In what ways does your corporation suppress the possibility of leadership for those not included in the formal hierarchy? Review those whom you consider to be leaders in your corporation that are not within the formal hierarchy. What qualities do they exhibit that make them stand out as leaders? Do these qualities emerge as a response to circumstances calling for leadership? Review your organizational practices for generating leadership and ask how appropriate they are to a complex intelligent system populated by independent intelligent beings. |to top| Questions for chapter 7 What are the theories, practices and structures in the production loop of your corporation that are barriers to effective pursuit of learning? What initial changes can be made in the theories, practices and structures to support the integration of learning into the loop? What are the most common personal attributes persisting in your corporation or industry (attitudes, levels of expertise, moods, etc.) that are barriers to the kinds of relationships necessary for learning? What personal attributes are missing in your corporation, the presence of which would foster the development of relationship? How much executive and management time is currently spent on learning? Is learning time effectively integrated into your corporation so that it creates value for others, and if not, what organizational practices would create valuable utilization of the resource? Are there any agreed-upon, measured levels of accountability in your corporation for the accumulation of knowledge; and if not, what designs do you see possible? How is that accountability currently distributed and what designs do you see possible? What monetary value does your corporation delegate to knowledge assets? |to top| Questions for chapter 8 Does your corporation value freedom for its own people in their work environment? How is this expressed? What is the nature of the limitations on freedom in your corporation? How do those limitations manifest themselves in practical terms? How much of the formal organization is focused on controls that inhibit freedom? Where can redundancy be built in to take the place of rigid rules, specific controls and micromanagement? Are you able to distinguish the operational definition of freedom clearly enough to be understood as you want it by those to whom you are explaining it? Are there any areas in your company where there is too much freedom and where there should be more control? Should that control be on action or communication? What can be designed to maximize intelligence? |to top| Questions for chapter 9 Can you state your strategic intent in such a way that people are able to get a sense of it and how it is unique to your corporation? Can you express your strategy in a few simple statements, so that anyone in your corporation could make sensible everyday decisions based on those statements? When was the last time your strategy was changed? What was the occasion for that change, and was it received with a positive response from employees and the financial community? How much time in the past year has the leadership team of your corporation spent working with strategic thinking as you now understand it? What displaces strategic thinking and strategic conversations from your agenda and that of your team? To what degree does your strategic intent demand that you change external circumstances and to what degree does it demand that you change yourself? |to top| Questions for chapter 10 Does your corporation have a specific commitment to creativity, innovation and flexibility? If so, how is it expressed? How is it measured? What specific structures, systems and practices are effectively in place to nourish that commitment? If surveyed, would your employees report that they are included in efforts at creativity, innovation and flexibility? Would they say that these qualities are requested of them and adequately supported? Are you willing to take the risks of the pursuit of creativity, innovation, and flexibility at the organizational level? What are your fears and concerns in the matter? What controls do you have to limit the risk? Are they also seriously limiting the possibility? What is your belief about the ability and willingness of the whole corporation to engage in activities consistent with creativity, innovation and flexibility? What specific amount of your resources is dedicated to attempts at creativity and innovation? (This includes efforts that have failed.) What is the return you are getting for that investment, if you are making one? If you aren't making such an investment, how do you expect creativity and innovation to flourish? |to top| Questions for chapter 11 Does your corporation have a vision statement, and what specific value does it provide to your corporation? What is your evidence that it is providing that value? Does the statement of vision generate expanding horizons and remarkable actions? What is your corporation becoming in its current course of action? What might it become? What are the boundaries currently limiting the exploration of the space of possibility in your corporation? Consider the current information value in your meetings, reports, and communications; what can be done to maximize information value? What currently has little information value? How much organizational time are you investing in exploring the space of possibility in your corporation? |to top| Questions for chapter 12 What structures in your corporation increase organizational intelligence? What structures decrease that intelligence? Where are things kept in place so that they reoccur, and yet the structures involved remain transparent? Discover this transparent structure by observing how nonmaterial or linguistic patterns occur. What is the design intention behind the surface structures apparent in your corporation? Do the structures of your corporation support the stated intentions of the corporation? What structures have been put in place to support new initiatives or projects? Are they sufficient to survive in the face of the existing structures -- including existing habits and practices? Is there a "structural blueprint" for your corporation's major initiatives? |to top| Questions for chapter 13 To what extent is engagement the source of action in your corporation? Where is it practiced? Where is it suppressed? To what extent does your corporation depend on force, manipulation, authority or coercion? Where and when is it used? Where is it maintained as a fallback? When you look at your best performing managers, do they use engagement and have great teams, or do they use domination and speak with an attitude of "just get it done"? Which receives the greatest reward in your corporation, engagement or domination? If one predominates, what does it tell you about your organizational principles? What initiatives have failed to take off as intended? In regard to each initiative, what attempts were made in the area of engagement and why did they fail? Who are the people who aren't listened to in your corporation? Is it because of position (level) or personality (style)? Listen to them. |to top| Questions for chapter 14 What expectations do you, or others, have regarding how much effect a transformation process will have on the existing system? If your corporation has started a transformation process, what failures or oversights in the first two phases are waiting to undermine your later phases? What initiative was started in your corporation more than a year ago? What degree of vitality is still in it, when you compare its current state to its state in the first few months? If the initiative is losing its vigor, where do you see deficiencies in the earlier stages and how can they be fulfilled? If your effort seems to be failing, what sources do you see in the areas of individuals, commitment, resources, or the process itself? |to top| Questions for chapter 15 What kind of breakdowns do you welcome or respond to effectively? What kind do you avoid or respond to poorly? What protective acts of blame, or transference of responsibility, are being accepted or put up with in your corporation? What successes in your corporation's history are the result of the successful resolution of challenges and breakdowns? Which challenges and breakdowns were self-chosen and which were "inflicted"? What challenges are currently being avoided by your corporation? Where can you declare breakdowns for yourself, your peers and your team that would powerfully generate velocity of learning in important areas? What breakdowns could be declared today in your corporation that would create learning challenges substantial enough to resolve outstanding problems or lead to industry domination? |to top| Questions for chapter 16 In past efforts to change, has the focus been on personal behavior or on the corporation? Have past change efforts been based on intervention or development? If you have suffered during a change effort in the past, locate the source of that in inconsistencies between personal demands and system demands. If there has been resistance in past change efforts, locate the source of that in attachments to identity. What organizational structures inhibit dialogue and will block change efforts in the future? Are any behavioral attributes needed that you don't have? Are you sure? |to top| Questions for chapter 17 Was the beginning of your most recent initiative declared publicly? Was a transition period also declared? Were the conditions for its completion known? If you have an earlier initiative that is complete, no longer in operation, or barely alive, how would it impact the corporation to declare it complete and have an event that marks the occasion? Consider doing that. When it is complete, notice what becomes available as the next phase of growth and development in your corporation. If you are currently in an initiative and dealing with uncertainty, expressions of confusion, or unsettled conditions, what conditions could you declare as the completion of a transition period? What kind of declarations could you make that would make a transition period clear for others? Do it. If you are about to embark on a new initiative, how much time will you allow yourself to become operational, and what are the conditions that will mark the completion of that phase? Spend the time required to make sure that the transition period is understood by everyone and, as you begin the phase, declare the phase that you are starting. If you are engaged in an initiative, use the process of interview as well as checking your own experience to continually monitor the process of the initiative. Check to see if the methods of implementation used in the initiative are consistent with the outcomes being sought in process. |to top|