Sometimes Diversity Trumps Ability

by Rod Collins

 

In a world reshaped by the new tools of mass collaboration, businesses with overbearing bosses amplifying their individual prowess through the power to command and control the work of others are no match for organizations that have the wherewithal to harness the diverse perspectives of self-organizing teams. When we look around at who’s succeeding in these early days of the digital revolution, the most effective business leaders are innovative catalysts, not traditional bosses.  If companies want to succeed in the post-digital world, they will need to abandon the long-accepted notion that a single intelligent and talented individual can lead organizations to greatness. That’s because, when you have the technology to aggregate and leverage collective intelligence, there are many times when diversity trumps ability

We recently experienced the incredible the power of collective intelligence when, in the summer of 2011, Firas Khatib, a biochemist at the University of Washington, decided to do something different to accelerate the progress of solving a molecular puzzle that had stumped the world’s best scientists for over a decade. The evasive puzzle involved figuring out the detailed molecular structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus found in monkeys. Because this enzyme plays an important role in the spread of the virus, Khatib knew that figuring out its structure could be the breakthrough needed to arrest the medical malady.  That’s when Khatib turned to Foldit.

Foldit is a collaborative online video game developed by the University of Washington that enlists players worldwide to solve difficult protein-structure problems. There are no special requirements for joining the Foldit community. All comers are welcome, which explains why most of the over 235,000 Foldit players have little or no background in biochemistry. Khabit recognized that the molecular challenge was a good fit for the capabilities of the Foldit game. Incredibly, what had evaded the world’s best individual scientific experts for ten years was solved by the collective knowledge of a diverse group of online gamers within only ten days.  When you have the capability to aggregate and leverage collective intelligence, you discover that wisdom of the old adage that none of us is smarter than all of us.

Today the smartest organizations are not the ones who build command-and-control hierarchies to amplify the influence of individual heroes and stars. They are the ones who build networks with the capacity to quickly aggregate and leverage the collective intelligence of all the people in their organizations. As we continue to marvel at the continuing evidence that nobody is smarter and faster than everybody, we can expect that traditional organizations will feel the pressure to morph themselves from top-down hierarchies to collaborative networks if they are to have any hope of succeeding in a post-digital world. And when they do, they will need to dramatically change the way leadership is practiced.

When business organizations are designed as collaborative networks, their leaders don’t fit the mold of traditional bosses such as Donald Trump, the star of The Apprentice, or Lee Iacocca, the legendary savior of Chrysler in the 1980’s. They behave more like the late Bill Gore, the humble founder of the maker of Gore-Tex, or Linus Torvalds, the innovative unassuming catalyst behind Linux. The most effective leaders today are facilitators who build collective learning processes and provide the tools for self-organizing teams to consistently and reliably deliver customer value. In a hyper-connected world, the true measure of a leader has more to do with mobilizing human capacity than with motivating individuals.  When it comes to leading others, they’re focused more on enabling connections than giving orders.

 

Rod Collins  (@collinsrod) is Director of Innovation at Optimity Advisors and author of Wiki Management: A Revolutionary New Model for a Rapidly Changing and Collaborative World.