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On
Regis Philbin's still popular TV show, "Who Wants to be a
Millionaire?", a contestant can call his smartest friend or ask the
audience for help with the answer. Contestants are more apt to get the right
answer when they ask the audience. The insight? Calling on the collective
intelligence can get you smarter support. Cultural
critic and cofounder of the Web zine Feed, Steven Johnson came to the same
conclusion in his book, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains,
Cities and Software (Scribner, 2001). He
found that intelligence resides at the street level, whether you are observing
harvester ants -- capable of great coordination or quick improvisational
response to attack despite their limited cognitive skills -- or workers in the
primitive factories of 19th-century England. Johnson found that groups could
achieve extraordinary feats through decentralized thinking or what is often
called emergent behavior. More bluntly, that means that even simple agents
following simple rules can create sophisticated structures. In the Digital Age,
this is a powerful concept because of the Web's capacity for facilitating
far-reaching group intelligence. As
massive proof of this theory, consider the most popular e-commerce site, E-Bay.
The E-Bay community rewards people who play by the rules and banishes those who
do not. In fact, the collective intelligence of E-Bay users has raised the level
of their collective game over time, to the benefit of all players. Some
participants have built an entire business for themselves that could not have
existed before the emergent intelligence of the E-Bay model. This
finding is especially important in our post-9/11 world, when we want to live a
life that matters. More than self-styled solo star performers, we seek out those
who want to create opportunity and community together. We want to find healthier
ways to communicate to connect. Pods
are another way for people to feel more connected and capable, even in a larger
group, and to reap the benefits of their collective intelligence. Transform a
larger organization such as a company, college student body, synagogue, or civic
club into 8- to 10-person pods of diverse people with specific goals and Rules
of Conduct. Like the ants, we can accomplish much together. We are more nimble
in changing direction when we've established one in the first place. People in
pods tend to feel a deeper affinity with each other and for their common
purpose. Further,
they are more likely to demonstrate more confident, higher-performing behavior.
The University of California campus at Santa Cruz was created around pods of
students who are then part of colleges within the larger campus. Compared to the
other UC campuses, the Santa Cruz students have fewer reported health problems
and accidents and a higher sense of well-being. In
the early 1990s, George Colony began organizing his company into pods of 8 or 10
people from different disciplines. Colony is chair and CEO of Forrester
Research, Inc., one of the largest Internet research firms. Says Colony,
"The pods are a way to mitigate the alienation of size as our company
grows. It's like being in a squad of people in the military. You get so that you
are willing to die for the guy next to you." In
his book, The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell writes that the
human brain is wired to have no more than 150 relationships. The deeper the
affinity and rewards people feel in those relationships, the more optimistic
they feel about their participation. The more optimistic one feels, the better
one performs. Thus the group creates a reinforcing upward spiral of smarter
mutual support. That's probably why people are more likely to excel, not in solo
tasks, but when they are part of a small group with a specific goal and
deadline, be it a school play or a fundraising project for their favorite cause. In this time of turmoil and greater uncertainty, when
people are more likely to seek affinity, we have grand opportunities to test
these ideas. We desire camaraderie more than competition. We want to make a
difference with others. How's that for a 2002 wish? Find or form a pod around
your greatest passion and see emergent intelligence in action. |
