Creating Conditions for the Enterprise’s Distributed Intelligence to Achieve Unparalleled Results

Gene Kim, Author, Researcher & Founder, IT Revolution
Dr. Steven J. Spear, S2S: Founder & MIT: Sr. Lecturer, See to Solve; MIT
Human beings-individually and collectively-can be phenomenal problem solvers, if conditions in which they work are shaped properly. However, if events are happening at high speed, in complex and tightly coupled systems, with high costs of failure and few iterations from which to learn, then people are put at disadvantage, having to figure out, on the fly, what to do, how to do it, and for what reason. That’s a real “danger zone” in which to operate. In contrast, the triumph zone is the stark contrast. If conditions are changing slowly, systems are simple (linear) or at least controllable and otherwise loosely coupled, and failure is cheap and learning iterations are many, then people’s individual and distributed intelligence can be well expressed.
In this presentation, we explore how to move people’s experience from the danger zone to the triumph by simplifying the environment so sensemaking is easier, and by slowing it down, by bringing problem-solving back into feedback-rich planning and practice (preparation) and out of fast-moving, high-stakes execution and performance. This is illustrated with a simple example, but one that extrapolates to others of significantly greater complexity and urgency.
There’s empirical reason to believe simplification and ‘slowification’ create significant advantage, and there is theoretical backup to the claim, based on fast and slow thinking distinctions by Kahneman and Twersky, “normal accidents” as explained by Perrow, and theories of modularization by Baldwin, Clark, Wheelwright, and others.