Collective Intelligence and Lean
How to Harness All of your Team’s Brainpower
There is a theory called collective intelligence that says groups of people are smarter than individuals.
Let’s look at a simple example of how this works. Imagine I listed the names of several states up on a board, and asked a room full of people to rank order the states based on size. Individual rankings tend to be all over the map. Some people do OK, but others are way off.
If I averaged out the rankings, though, collective intelligence wins out. The group answer would likely be closer to reality than most individual estimates.
The same holds true in Lean improvements. Collective intelligence can drive some great improvements. The trick is to unleash it while preventing groupthink, the tendency of groups of people to latch onto one belief.
Four Tips to Unleash Collective Intelligence
- Collective intelligence needs people to go beyond their normal boundaries. Groupthink tends to focus on traditional beliefs. Break this obstacle by getting people outside of their comfort zone to come up with new ideas. For example, make every person come up with 7 ideas during brainstorming sessions. The variety of novel ideas this generates gives teams more alternatives to look at.
- Collective intelligence requires participation from everyone. Don’t let shy people keep quiet or assertive people take over the conversation. Collective intelligence depends on full participation by the whole group.
- Collective intelligence requires experimentation. When your team comes up with ideas, try them out. The benefit of collective intelligence is not limited to a conference room. Several people mocking up a fixture, for example, can come up with more ideas and identify more problems than an individual could alone.
- Collective intelligence requires discussion. If people are afraid to speak up with ideas, collective intelligence doesn’t happen. Facilitators and team leaders should manage discussions to prevent judgment about people, and create an environment where people are open to having their ideas dissected.
Share Your Thoughts |1 comment|
© 2009-2010 by Velaction Continuous Improvement, LLC. All rights reserved.
Other Information You May Be Interested In...
- Do Goals Limit Team Performance? Conventional wisdom contends that goals are essential for improving team performance. I’ve shared that belief for years, but what if...
- Brainstorming Techniques Brainstorming techniques have varying degrees of structure, but they are all used to generate ideas. Brainstorming techniques include: A brainstorming...
- Change Management Change management is a fairly large field of study that deals with effectively and efficiently introducing changes into an organization....
- Affinity Diagram One of the more unusually named Lean tools, the affinity diagram is not really a diagram at all. It is...
- Team Members Late to Meetings During a Kaizen Blitz? Not Anymore! Team Members Late to Meetings During a Kaizen Blitz? Not Anymore! I’m going to try out a new...
User Info
Login
Connections
FREE Lean Information!
| Download FREE Lean Training Now! |
 |
R 38 page tutorial on Pareto charts R Lean Audio training on Standard Work (14 min), Takt Time (14 min), 5 Whys (7 min) R Maximize Your Lean Success monthly newsletter |
We promise never to sell, rent, trade, or share your email with any other organization! |
[...] Collective Intelligence and Lean. How to Harness All of Your Team’s Brainpower dal blog Gotta Go Lean di Jeff Hajek, dove l’autore parla di intelligenza collettiva contro quella individuale, molto interessante la classificazione… (traduzione automatica) [...]