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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Channeling Collective Intelligence

By Craig Maier, Consultant, Dewey & Kaye

For years, researchers and managers have searched for the secret behind effective meetings. A few weeks ago, Leslie Bonner, a Senior Consultant at Dewey & Kaye, discussed the implications of an article by CMU professor Anita Williams Woolley (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11010/1116833-115.stm) on what Woolley describes as the "collective intelligence" groups use to solve problems together.

For managers, meetings present opportunities to tap that collective intelligence. But how? In a recent article (http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/04/the-creativity-killer-group-discussions/237531/), David Sherwin, a principal designer at the San Francisco-based innovation firm frog design, takes an experimental approach that builds on Woolley's research.

Woolley's work emphasizes the importance of social sensitivity – taking turns, listening to others or being willing to admit that you don't know the answer – in group decisions, and Sherwin agrees that these skills lay the foundation for effective meetings. "One of the joys of working in teams is the cadence and flow of dialogue between people, and seeing how ideas grow and change through discussion," he writes. "We often become lost in these exchanges, and delightfully so."

But fostering collective intelligence, Sherwin continues, involves more than getting people to take turns or listen better. While "group activity can provide the impetus for better framing of problems, which can lead to original solutions," we find those solutions not by giving the discussion free reign but by focusing the energy of the conversation in productive directions.

Ironically, we're our most creative when we set limits on ourselves through well crafted agendas, time limits, clear roles and disciplined questions. This is true of Woolley's study, too: All of her test groups had clear goals – like solving puzzles or responding to moral dilemmas – to concentrate their thinking.

Being structured, though, doesn't mean running every meeting by Robert's Rules of Order. Sherwin invites managers to experiment with meeting styles to find the ones that best build and complement the collective intelligence of their particular group, such as a structure that allows for brief breaks in the discussion to allow people to collect their thoughts.

"Instead of holding an hour-long meeting with a facilitator at the whiteboard, pen poised to capture ideas called out, what would happen if every person in the room were provided five minutes to generate ideas individually?" he asks. "How would that transform the interaction between people in the room, as those ideas were shared with the group?"

Sherwin describes this approach to meetings as "timeboxing." Instead of a series of presentations and reports or a free-ranging discussion, timeboxing begins by establishing among the group a clear understanding of the problem. Then, the meeting proceeds by breaking that problem into discrete steps. Each step balances brief periods for individual work – brainstorming suggestions, taking notes or jotting down questions – with longer periods for group discussion, evaluation and decision-making.

In a way, timeboxing is like interval training for runners, where short sprints of individual creativity are balanced with periods of reflection and evaluation. At each step, the group moves toward a tangible result that is sketched or noted by the meeting leader, pauses briefly to reflect on that result and then changes direction to move to the next part of the problem.

Timeboxing is not for every group or every meeting, and it offers no substitute for bad interpersonal skills. Still, Sherwin asks questions that encourage managers to be purposeful, reflective and creative: Instead of running the same old meetings in the same old ways, can we restructure them to help us think better together? What can we do differently? What could we get in return?

 

Craig Maier's work at Dewey & Kaye focuses on business development and nonprofit corporate communication. He can be reached at 412-434-1335 or cmaier@deweykaye.com. Connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/craigmaier.

 

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