Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 3; May 2001

ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

By Bonnie Tsai, US and France

Recent Changes in the Workplace

Today, in the work place no one person has the complete set of skills needed to do the work. In organizations today using the "new technology,"such as computerized machines, knowledge tends to be fragmented. No one from the Chief Executive Officer on down has the complete set of skills needed to do the job. This is because large organizations cannot for practical and financial reasons train their employees in the whole range and level of skills needed for everything to run smoothly. Intelligence, which was once thought of as being individual, has become organizational. It is used in solving real world problems in which many people hold pieces of the solution, but not the whole. In real world problem-solving, people have to be able to weigh risks and uncertainties. For this reason there is a need for and a potential for sharing information related to in-group work. To do this, workers have to be able to respond quickly and flexibly. They must build up the level of confidence to ask other colleagues to help them when something unpredictable happens. In this case it is vital that people are able to work together to solve the problem. This was dramatically illustrated a few years ago by a plane crash in Portland, Oregon. The co-pilot saw what was going to happen and had the expertise to set it right. But he had a bad working relationship with the pilot and was too afraid of his reaction to say anything. So the plane crashed and lives were lost. According to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, workers in the future will need to build up a sense of trust and confidence so that they can share and exchange information with colleagues. This seems to happen when some kind of social contact outside the workplace has established empathy between colleagues.

Reasons for the Change

So what has happened to bring about these changes in the workplace? There has been a real shift from workers needing physical skills to needing intellectual ones. Let me give you an example, I was asked some years ago to set up a self-access center in a papermaking company in the southwest of France. While there, I was shown around the production area where the paper was being made. This was not a pleasant place to be in because of the horrible smell that goes along with the papermaking process. The workers at this time were directly involved in the production of paper. They were physically handling the machines, vats and rollers. Each worker was assigned a specific job, which he did over and over again, day in and day out. There was a foreman who oversaw the operation and social conversation was frowned upon because obviously this cut down on production time. If any problem arose, it was solved by physical clues such as the feel or smell of the paper pulp. Workers could test the pulp with their hands to see if everything was normal. If a problem came up, it was solved by direct contact with the machine.

Recently I returned to this same company and what a change! These same workers were still doing the same job, but under very different conditions. Now instead of a dark, damp workspace, they were working behind glass panels in a well-lit, air-conditioned room. Instead of industrial machines they were making paper using computers. Physical contact with papermaking had been replaced by a more intellectual symbolic way of doing their job. To check on how things were going, they had to look at a computer and use its data to make decisions. If something went wrong they couldn't just go and fix the machine. Now they had to stay by the computer and think about the sequence and how they could change it to solve the problem. They needed to manipulate symbolic media instead of relying on rote. Drawing on Gardner's concept of what intelligence is they had moved from a bodily-kinestheic intelligence to a more mathematical-logical one. Today's workers need to know how to think. As S. Zuboff who did extensive research in this area states in her book, The Age Of Smart Machines, "Your past physical mobility must be translated into mental thought processes."

Backward versus Forward Thinking

To understand better how thinking has changed in the workplace, we need to compare backward to forward thinking. A hundred years ago scientists around the world were satisfied that they had arrived at an accurate picture of the physical world. Indeed many scientists felt that the study of physics was nearly completed: no big discoveries remained to be made, only details and finishing touches.

Then some interesting things began to happen. Röntgen discovered rays that could pass through human skin. Because he wasn't sure what they were, he called them X rays. A few months later, Henri Becquerel found a natural ore emitting something that fogged photographic plates. This was called radioactivity. Thus we were on the road to the discovery of an invisible world.

Physicists remained calm, expecting that these oddities could be easily explained by existing theory. This is the attitude of the backward thinker. Nevertheless another kind of thinker moved away from the existing theory, created an entirely new conception of the universe, and of new technologies that would transform daily life in unimaginable ways. These people were the forward thinkers.

The forward thinker works from existing information to go on and find new facts and solve problems in a different way. In the process existing theory might change, evolve, or be proved wrong. In comparison the backward thinker finds information to back up and prove yet once again existing theory. In other words they seek solutions that conform to present beliefs. Forward thinkers on the other hand challenge what has been proven and even break rules in order to find new and innovative ways of doing things.

Practical Interlude

Here is an activity you can use with your students in order for them to experience backward and forward thinking. I call it The Great Pipe Cleaner Challenge. Give 10 pipe cleaners to each student. Ask them to make a hat using only 5 of them. That's all. Don't elaborate. Give ten minutes to complete the task. When the time is up, review the results.

It's not unusual to find the majority of students did exactly what you told them to do. They will have made some kind of hat following your instructions. These people followed the "rule" you set out for them. Now ask them how they could have broken the rule. For example they could have used more pipe cleaners. They could have worked together with someone else instead of working alone. They could have added other material to their creation besides the pipe cleaners and so on. Now ask participants to take the remaining pipe cleaners and make another hat, but to do so in a way that breaks the rules.

The big question here is how does traditional education prepare students for this kind of thinking? The answer is that to a large extent it doesn't. This is because traditional education is more about giving learners the kind of literacy skills, which while useful, as building blocks are still very often useless in the workplace. This is partly because educators have felt that by the time students leave school any job related skills might be obsolete. Nevertheless, Dr. Howard Gardner warns us in The Unschooled Mind, that if we don't do something to change the current situation, schools themselves will become obsolete.

A Kind of Education that is an Exception to the Rule

There is however one notable exception to the rule and that is the apprenticeship system. This is where people receive on job training under the watchful eye of an expert.

The apprentice receives instruction from an expert in a number of ways. First since he or she is more or less integrated into the organization from the first day, they are encouraged to participate through observation from the sidelines. This kind of participation is peripheral in the sense that they see what is happening at all times without necessarily being aware that they are doing so. Secondly, the apprentice is gradually drawn into doing increasingly more challenging tasks connected with job skills. And thirdly, the most important, he or she is given relevant and practical feedback on their job performance by the expert. The apprentice will be able to act upon this feedback immediately to improve their skills. The apprenticeship system fulfils Dr. Gardner's definition of teaching so as to acquire genuine understanding. Genuine understanding for him is the capacity to create or perform something of value to the culture and society in which we live.

If we return to forward thinking again for a minute, it is interesting to note that experts in any given field are more likely to use forward thinking in problem solving. They tend to be more varied and flexible in the way they think and are thus able to move easily from backward to forward thinking according to the circumstances. This is what is needed in today's world, people who are innovative and creative thinkers able to challenge proven ways in order to find new ways of doing things

The Role of the Expert in Acquiring Thinking Skills

I mentioned above the role of the expert in the apprenticeship system of learning. A very good way for students to acquire thinking skills is by observing an expert. Next I'd like to analyse how thinking differs between experts and non-experts.

An example of this is the difference in the way a chess master and a novice remember chess positions. This difference lies in the size of "chunks" of information, which can be stored in the short-term memory or working memory of the expert. The expert will have larger chunks of information at his or her disposal whereas the novice will generally have one piece of information per chunk.

This is perfectly illustrated in the window paning technique. A windowpane is a drawing of a large rectangle divided into nine equal squares or windows. Each square represents a chunk of information. It follows the –2 7-+2 principle of how the working brain is able to store information. This means that the working brain (short-term memory) is able to store around 7 chunks of information at any one time. The windowpane has nine windows so we can use anywhere from five to nine if them when information is memorized. Information to be learned is divided into chunks and written into the windows. Information is learned first sequentially and then randomly using the visual-spatial characteristics of the windowpane. In the beginning the chunks of information may be small. However with practice comes expertise and the ability to handle larger and larger chunks of information.

Research carried out at Harvard University also indicates that the expert's skills are largely confined to tasks in their domain and don't necessarily transfer to other skills. It has also been noted that experts are better at representations using diagrams or mental models. According to Dr. David Perkins co-director of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, The expert's key to success lies in practice. Practice seems to be the major independent variable in the acquisition of a skill. To understand this better, we can compare practice with experience.

Practice versus. Experience

Experience is about "time on task." Practice is about efforts to enhance one's ability over time. Generally this involves some kind of training. An example of this can be seen in playing the violin. Experience or "time on task" might account for the reasonable proficiency of an amateur violin player. Professional violinists need to spend a lot of time thinking about and mentally rehearsing their performance. They must also, like the apprentice, receive thoughtful and constructive feedback on technique. Practice entails developing knowledge. Such knowledge enables the violinist to adapt their performance to the acoustics of different concert halls and the effect of weather on their violin. Thus the expert violinist is able to enhance their performance under variable circumstances.

If we return to the chess player, he or she might well accumulate up to 1,000 hours of practice time to become an expert. Along with practice time, the expert has the propensity to reflect on his own efforts. This may mean slowing down on his or her problem-solving process either during or after encountering a challenging situation. This allows for "active questioning" of one's knowledge base, models, and theories.

Practical Interlude

In order to test this out, ask students to find someone they consider an "expert" in some area, which is of interest to them. Sit down with that person and ask them to explain to you how they do whatever it is that they are an "expert" in. This exchange can bring out strategies that the novice can use in order to move towards being an expert. Very often, however the "expert" will find it difficult to explain exactly how he or she became proficient in their area. Asking this person to reflect upon it is asking him or her to fulfil this essential requirement of experteeship: reflecting on the process of becoming an expert.

The Role of Self-Assessment

Dr. Perkins co-director of the Harvard Graduate School of Education emphasises that what education needs to be concerned with today is how to train people so that they are able to perform their jobs better and to live better. To do this, students need to be able to assess their own work. In the classroom the scenario would be very much like this. A class full of students is bent over essays in which they argue for and against wearing school uniforms. In preparation for this task they have interviewed teachers, other students parents, and administrators. in order to find out the important issues with each side of the case. The teacher has previously given the student a scoring rubric that lists the criteria for the essay. This includes all the elements needed to produce a good essay.

The criteria set down requires students to provide a clear and accurate treatment of the evidence to support their claim as well as a carefully written discussion of evidence that could weaken their claim and why it does not completely undermine it.

The students are in the process of assessing their own work on the essay. When they are done, they begin to revise their essays in order to build on its strengths and at the same time, eliminate its weaknesses. They are willing to revise because the scoring rubric provides clear directives for improvement. Several students ask the teacher for help. The teacher also checks the progress of one student who tends to overestimate his progress. Most students tend to be more severe in their evaluation than she is, so she lets them work on their own.

It is this self-assessment that can prompt some students to be more reflective and better able to control their own thinking in order to learn and think better. It follows that students who are better able to monitor and regulate their own thinking tend to be better at problem solving skills, writing, reading and even playing games. It also is apparent that teaching students to assess and revise their own work improves its quality.

Learning Thinking Skills

So can thinking skills be taught at school? For an answer to this question we turn to Project Intelligence or Odyssey, as it is also known. This is a course that can easily fill a year and seeks to teach the kind of strategies students' need in order to be able to assess their own work. To do this the course is built around using reasoning, problem solving, decision making, and inventive thinking.

Most courses designed to improve thinking teach strategies like the ones mentioned above. Strategies reorganize thinking by providing patterns to follow that work against thinking errors such as being too hasty, narrow or fuzzy reasoning and sprawling. The desired outcome here is to achieve metacognition. As used here this term refers to monitoring and managing one's own thinking. This includes making plans before beginning to think through a problem, regulating thinking during the time the problem is being solved and reflecting back afterwards to revise and plan how to think better in the future. This is what Dr. Perkins calls, reflective intelligence. This includes the contribution of knowledge to thinking and reflective self-guidance to intelligent behaviour. Any instructional efforts to enhance intelligence should seek to focus on reflective intelligence.

Dr R. Sternberg of Yale University famed for his research on emotional intelligence defines what he thinks are the qualities necessary to acquire good creative thinking skills. According to Dr. Sternberg it is important to know how long to preserve at a task. Sometimes it is better to know when to stop rather then stubbornly going on. While this is true for some people, others need to preserver longer to accomplish their outcome. It can, as was stated earlier, take years and years of practice in a domain to achieve success. The challenge is to know when to let go and when to preserver. People also need to feel motivated and dedicated to their work and to recognize the importance of teamwork. Interestingly enough, Dr. Sternberg notes extrinstric rewards like money can hinder long term development while intrinsic rewarding within itself can nurture long-term development. An intrinstic reward could be a level of challenge in balance with a level of skills.

Teamwork

Dr Sternberg also insists on the importance of teamwork. That is to have colleagues to call on when the unexpected happens and help is needed. According to Sternberg having these qualities will be one of the key factors to success and well being in the future.

Today organizations need people skilled in problem finding and creative thinking. In order to do this intelligence within the organization needs to be fostered. This can be done through the following means:

1. Making sure there is a flow of information within the organization. Since information technologies blur the historical roles of managers as thinkers and workers as laborers, a level of trust needs to exist, which permits an exchange of information and the willingness to ask colleagues for help. This is necessary when the normal chain of information flow is not effective or adaptable to the situation. This could be for example some kind of crisis situation out of the daily norm.

This means that team building has to become a part of everyone's training. This can be easily carried out in the classroom where co-operative learning would replace more competitive classroom activities.

Practical Interlude

Here is an example of a team building activity used on management training courses. Ask students to look around and collect some typical objects found in the classroom. Ask them to experiment with the sound these instruments make. Gradually they bring there sound together to make a musical composition. They next find a way to note down their composition. This does not have to depend on musical notation but any form of symbols that will make the composition clear. The group finally performs their masterpiece.

Asking people in the workplace to work together to compose and then perform a musical composition is interesting if you stop and think that an orchestra performing a piece of music is often used as a metaphor for a well- run organization. The conductor is compared to the C.E.O. while the players of the orchestra are compared to the workers in an organization. Each has their role whether large or small. Each one is vital for success.

2. There needs to be a degree of tolerance for experimentation.
   Workers need freedom to work, play, experiment and enter into dialogue with each other. There is a very good example of this in a computer software company that set up a flexi-system of work hours. Technicians sharing working hours with the management team were strongly discouraged from "playing around" with their computers during working hours. They were encouraged to be task orientated. They were definitely there to work.

Technicians who worked nightime hours when there was no "management control" tended rather naturally to spend more time playing around with their computers and chatting with each other. They took the time to experiment with their program and share their discoveries with each other. The management quickly noted that the night team came up with more innovative and original astute than the daytime team. The message was clear: if organizations want their workers to be creative, the workplace has to be conductive to creativity.

3. We can also take a lesson from the Japanese who do not leave thinking exclusively to managers and work-related tasks to workers. Also there doesn't seem to be the feeling that workers are unable to master their own jobs without assistance from above. The Japanese model instead relies heavily on the information-processing skills of its workers. This means that in Japanese organizations the workers are a viable and indispensable element. A quote taken from a Japanese quality control manual states that, "it is necessary to move away from the management style that emphasizes efficiency exclusively and instead recogizes the unlimited potential of human capabilities."

Conclusion

The work place is changing rapidly. This is due primarily to the introduction of more and more technology into our working lives. This means that instead of talking about individual intelligence there is a growing trend to speak of organizational intelligence. That is individuals will be asked to work together as a team to share and use their own unique skills and talents. Out of this sharing and blending comes organizational intelligence.

In order to prepare students for the workplace, schools need to be concerned about teaching learners the skills that will lead them to be successful and productive in their working lives and in their personal lives. These skills can be grouped around the concept of teaching students how to think creatively in such areas as problem solving, problem finding, reasoning, decision making, and reflective thinking which leads to self-assessment.

It also means that in the classroom we need to development cooperative learning and teamwork that will enable workers to have the skill and willingness to work together to obtain a common outcome.

In order to accomplish the above, we can look around us for working models such as the apprenticeship system where trainees are encouraged to take a more and more active and complex role in the learning process. The outcome here is for the learner to be able to show genuine understanding through the production or creation of something that is of value to his community and culture.

A big hug to Tessa Woodward, Editor of the teacher trainer, for helping me get this finished product.

Emotional Intelligence, Goleman, Daniel, Bloomsbury Paperbacks 1996

The Unschooled Mind, Howard Gardner, Fontana Press 1993

The Disciplined Mind, Howard Gardner, Simon and Schuster 1999

Learnable Intelligence and Intelligent Leaning, Heidi Goodrich and David Perkins http://www.pzweb.harvard.edu

Practical Intelligence, Nature and Origins of Competence in the Everyday World, R.J. Sternberg and R.K. Wagner, C.U.P. 1986

Teaching For Understanding: Linking Research with Practice, Martha Wiske, Editor, Jossy Bass 1998

In The Age of Smart Machines: The Future of Work and Power, S. Zuboff, Basic Books 1988