Business Management Skills

There could be a tendency in business and in life to fixate on the value of individual intelligence. After all , those who graduate from Ivy League establishments are waymore enthusiastically employed because of the perception that more intelligent students attend those colleges. Indeed, in the right eventualities, it is difficult to over-value individual intelligence. However, when it comes to implementing change, the individual intelligence of the organization’s members can be largely unimportant. Implementing change at the organizational level hinges on unified behaviors instead of the talent of individuals.

A historical example of this idea would be the movement of giant groups of squaddies during battles before the modern time. In the days of Napoleon or the Civil War, the more or less accepted methodology of attack was for 2 groups of infantrymen to face eachother on an open field and to advance on eachother. So long as both groups sticked to this technique, the infantrymen involved handled implementing change, which involved moving forward, reasonably well. This occurred because the mass of infantrymen were responding as a unit with little individual intelligence being employed for the task.

If one side chose to change the strategy and engage in flank attacks, the situation modified considerably. In flank attacks, the enemy doesn’t approach directly but moves in from the sides. In this position itis probable that at the individual level, the rank and file soldier knows what is occurring as well as what needs to happen. Regardless of the individual intelligence to recognize the actuality of the situation, flank attacks were enormously successful maneuvers when executed correctly. The success of the flank attack can be attributed largely to the disability of the soldiers as a group to go about implementing change in the way it wanted to happen.

When implementing change in an organization, the same truth applies. Really bright individuals may recognize the necessity of the change, but lack the power to enact it at the group level. Their individual intelligence is less important in that scenario than the ability of the organization in total to engage in unified behaviour.

For more information, please see our website: Implementing Change