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INTRODUCTION

Collective intelligence

Just as science has proven that intelligent people are not those with the most neurons, but those whose neurons are best interconnected, so it is in organizations.

In his book Las culturas fracasadas, el talento y la estupidez en las sociedades, Marina (2010) points out that shared intelligence is the result of the interaction between individual intelligences, since human intelligence is structurally and functionally social. For this author, culture is the result of social intelligence and the answer to the essential problems of life. Therefore, an intelligent society is that which is capable of generating good solutions to universal problems, such as life, production, power, the relationship with the community, conflicts and the family, among others. In contrast, he considers societies “stupid” when they create more problems than they solve, destroy community capital and weaken the vital possibilities of their citizens. This can happen because of what he calls intellectual fracture, which is the distance caused by the inability to articulate or make individual intelligence and its interests compatible with shared intelligence.

De Ugarte (2010), a Spanish economist who publishes his books online for free, has highlighted the power of an interconnected society, which today has resources that allow to find a common space for individual intelligences and generating collective spaces:

We live in a highly interconnected world, where interconnectivity has increased at unthinkable speeds, as Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google pointed out:

There was 5 Exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days (...) If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go. Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are.” (p.16)

People are connecting faster and more frequently with each other; however, how can we ensure that not only individuals are more effective, but the whole group? How can a team, an organization or a society achieve replicable mechanisms to effectively address the challenges in their environment?

Based on his experience in consulting with various groups and organizations in Latin America, this author proposes that in order to create collective intelligence, you need to get a significant amount of people to:

1. Have a shared understanding of what the challenges are and the ways to address them.

2. Be clear about what their role is within this challenge and acquire the skills to tackle it.

3. Be emotionally committed to a shared purpose.

In the technical world, dominated by the classical scientific method, there is a tendency to think that once we find the answer, the problem is solved. This is true when it is a problem whose solution depends on knowledge or experience. For example, if a car stops working and we can find the fault, we have solved the problem. That is the case in countless other problems such as repairing a water heater or solving a mathematical problem. This same logic tends to be extrapolated to human domains. In many cases, we tend to believe that once we have acknowledged the “communication problem,” we have found the root cause and therefore solved the communication dilemma between two people or a leader and their team. It may seem simple and obvious to us. However, we forget that the people involved in this problem, which can be easily solved by “communicating better,” don’t apply this solution because they probably don’t know how to do it effectively, at least not yet. In other words, what seems an obvious answer requires a whole learning process for several people that will probably take time and may not even be entirely successful.

The challenge is not only to know what needs to be done, but also how to get a group of people in different roles and with different levels of power and understanding to be “on the same page” about what they understand as a problem and therefore what needs to be done, how to do it, who does it and the commitment it entails. What makes this even more challenging is that, at this point, they do not have the same understanding, or they haven’t found a way to talk together to even put the issue on the table and analyze it without fighting, discrediting, or ending in conflict.

Creating collective intelligence implies helping the whole system to mature simultaneously, that is, to acquire skills to find effective solutions not only as individuals, but as a whole.

The principles of collective intelligence are the basis of the organizational climate improvement model developed in this book, which seeks to provide an applied view so all individuals and teams that wish to create a sustainable improvement in their organizational climate can do so.

Why Work on Organizational Climate?

There are many studies that show the value of workplace well-being and how people who are happy are also more productive (Lewis, 2011). Nowadays, the value of investing in a positive environment is not under discussion, especially in a society where the value of respect for diversity and work-life balance are topics that are usually on the table of governments and businesses. But beyond that, the impact that this aspect has on the business and the achievement of results has also been explored in depth. The expression “social capital” reflects this very well. Alder and Kwon point out that social capital is equivalent to the value of internal networks, as they reduce transaction costs due to increased trust between people. Social capital represents a platform that facilitates flexible, fast, and coordinated action. It stimulates individual learning and commitment, enhancing organizational performance (Alder y Kwon, 2002, as cited in Lewis, 2011).

Probably the most challenging issue of organizational climate has to do with the purpose, i.e., what is the ultimate purpose of the work. That is where we find major differences in mental models. In my experience, most organizations and, therefore, executives, managers and staff tend to associate organizational climate with how good the coexistence in the workplace is and if there is an environment for good human relationships. What is so striking about this? People don’t connect organizational climate with work practices, that is, with the way decisions are made, differences are resolved, and work and processes are structured. Many climate management programs are built as a parallel plan to the way work is performed. In many cases, they are built as a human capital management responsibility, where the chain of command does not clearly see its role, except to agree that a positive environment is valuable.

Today, the challenge is not to demonstrate the value of the organizational climate, but how to change the way we look at it and its relationship with management and the way activities are carried out to generate results, and consequently, to delve into how this can be done. If the climate is understood as good social relations, the action plans will be oriented to improve coexistence. If it is understood as the improvement of personnel conditions, the plans will be to allocate resources to improve this situation. On the other hand, if the organizational climate is understood within the way of working, we will address the work itself in order to manage it.

This book focuses on organizational climate management and explains in depth the key variables that, when addressed, will generate sustainably positive results in organizational climate surveys, as has been our experience over the years in our work with various organizations.

Rather than focusing the work on the results of the climate survey, this book claims that the score obtained in each of the variables is directly impacted by the factors and the way they are addressed, which are detailed in this book and can be managed with the control panel in Chapter 7.

Trying to Turn a “Soft” Topic into a “Hard” One

Historically, the organizational climate has been a complex issue for organizations and management to understand. First, because of the idea that “you can’t improve what you don’t measure,” the focus has been strongly placed on climate measurement, which generates a series of indicators that are easier to read for those who are used to managing results. But when it comes to managing these “hard” statistics, the classic paradigms are insufficient and often naive.

Indeed, the classic management paradigm for any measurable result is that to the extent that it is below the expected standard, the correct thing to do is to quickly build an action plan to bring the variable to the desired level. But this logic does not work in the same way when faced with a “soft” or purely human variable such as organizational climate. We have seen multiple action plans based on activities such as:

- Making the information on organizational climate available to everyone and raising people’s concerns or requests;

- Implementing a set of activities to make employee relations more bearable, such as birthday celebrations, time off, social activities, stretch breaks, and so on.

Many organizations have seen, with frustration, how the implementation of these measures have a short-term impact but fail to maintain a good climate in the long run. This is partly due to failing to consider the costs that these actions imply and the fact that most of the improvement is based on activities where the administration or management is doing most of the work. These same organizations have been left with an even more frustrating feeling of injustice when the same people who have attended and enjoyed the recreational activities organized by the company through management continue in the same critical stance as before.

The organizational climate is a complex process to understand that requires a systemic view, it cannot be improved or acted upon from the logic “A produces B, therefore if we want B, we must do A.” It is the type of situation that Heifetz defines as an “adaptive challenge” (Linsky & Heifetz, 2002), that is, a change that cannot be achieved by exercising authority or giving the most logically correct answer, but requires a shared commitment by all to a common purpose, which is not always so easy to discover.

The Influence (and Pressure) Of Social Ranking on the Management of Organizational Climate

In the last decade, because of development and social trends, the demand on organizations to be “good citizens” has led to the incorporation of new standards regarding the environment, community, safety, quality, customer responsiveness and, of course, employee relations. It has become important for companies to be good workplaces in the eyes of society, as a way of appearing socially responsible, modern, and attractive to business, social and political stakeholders, and to “show” who is who when it comes to caring about people.

The list of the best companies to work for and the desire to be included in this ranking, in addition to approaching organizational climate from an “activity plan for good coexistence” perspective, has unwittingly led the management of the organizational climate to an often-transactional space, where the company gives in exchange for a good result.

This is why it is so necessary to ask ourselves whether people and executives know what the basis for a good or bad organizational climate is and what actions are required of them in this regard. It is common to hear the expression “we are all responsible for the work environment” used in the sense that we are all equal or have the same role in improving it. Implicit in this phrase, there is a deep confusion about how different roles impact the organizational climate, given that senior managers, middle managers, and employees do not deal with the same aspects.

Think of this as a family analogy, could you imagine a relationship with your children where you have to give them everything they want because that’s the only way they will be happy? What would they learn in this situation? That if they complain, they can get more, that their parents should solve their problems, that they don’t have to do any special work, their parents do. In short, as Shakespeare puts it, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child. We all know that educating also implies teaching the exercise of freedom with responsibility. Establishing a paternalistic bond, on the other hand, ends up making the relationship childish.

The Evolutionary Model of Organizational Climate

Through years of experience working on this subject with national and international organizations in different industries, this book develops and proposes the evolutionary model of organizational climate, which includes five essential principles:

1. The organizational climate is a relationship, as is its management.

2. What is most visible is not necessarily the deepest issue.

3. The management of the organizational climate requires action from different roles.

4. If relationships mature, so does the management of the organizational climate.

5. There is a hierarchical ranking in the working dimensions of organizational climate.

These principles are supported by a set of practical tools, all of which are integrated into a control panel.

The evolutionary model is structured on the basis that managing the organizational climate is learning to deal with a relationship and the variables that compose and affect it. In our experience, if the management plan used by the company to address the organizational climate incorporates these factors in a comprehensive manner, the survey results are substantially better and more sustainable.

The evolutionary model of organizational climate is based on the concept of collective intelligence described in Chapter 1. This concept in fact transcends the organizational climate and has implications for multiple social and collective processes; for example, safety at work and the processes of dialogue and social understanding, which are not the subject of this book.

The evolutionary model considers organizational climate management from a perspective involving three dimensions:

1. The business dimension considers all the variables associated with the management of the business unit (or management unit, which will be considered synonymous for the purposes of this book). This dimension groups together all the variables linked to management, i.e., the way in which it is conducted and directed. As we shall see, there is a wide range of variables in this dimension that affect climate. For example, many unsatisfactory group dynamics are the result of poorly defined processes with unclear roles, which lead to a feeling of unfair treatment and strained relationships. Similarly, work overloads that cause great discomfort and a feeling of unfairness are the result of an insufficient structure or one that needs to be redefined. The management dimension is often not very visible, i.e., although it has an enormous impact on the organizational climate, it is not usually perceived directly by people, which means that in many cases action plans do not consider addressing this dimension.

2. The group dimension incorporates all the relational dynamics between the parties involved in the organizational climate: managers, , leaders, teams, and Human Capital Management. The group dimension is not the sum of the characteristics of the individuals. This dimension is essentially systemic, and addressing it implies taking perspective to understand relationship dynamics where the parts move in relation to each other.

One of the key aspects to consider here is the differentiation between the role and the person. That is, those involved must be able to understand the implications of their role within the entire system, so that managers, supervisors, and employees can identify how they contribute to making the work and the organizational climate more productive, but from the role that each one plays, and learn to do it effectively. A manager or supervisor who behaves in all areas as a peer of their employees may generate closeness, but at the same time will cause issues that affect people to go unanswered. An employee who, on the basis of “being spontaneous,” does not take a constructive (even critical) stance when expressing their views in group meetings, will not be collaborating to progress.

3. The individual dimension considers the variables linked to individuals separately. That is, individual performance and personal attitudes. Trends can be obtained by summing up the set of attitudes that are mostly observed in individuals, but these cannot be confused with the group behavior, which is more than the sum of its parts. This is the most essential and basic dimension, from which all change has to start, from people’s commitment and attitude.

Given that it is the most visible of all the dimensions, the challenge is to not reduce work on organizational climate to only personal commitment. Committed people, who have no clarity about the role they play in improving the climate and without the capacity to exercise it, will not bring about sustainable change.

In the author’s experience, addressing the management of the organizational climate in a sustainable manner requires comprehension and intervention in all three dimensions. Often the approach is based on the individual dimension, which is the most visible one, but it leaves out key variables linked to the management model such as the processes, policies, roles, and structure, which, as we will see in the following chapters, can have a great impact on the organizational climate, even though they are often invisible or blurry to those involved. The same is true of issues linked to team dynamics and teams’ ways of operating, which involve a broader dimension than the sum of individual behaviors.

The evolutionary model also incorporates the vision of maturity, which is the notion that human processes transform over time, becoming more solid and firmly sustained. This consequently shows that the role of leaders is to encourage maturity in the dynamics and make the organizational climate evolve, opening up new possibilities for action and understanding.

This book explains the evolutionary model in depth. Its purpose is to provide new perspectives for understanding and managing the organizational climate, which lead to new questions and thus new answers beyond those already known. Some exercises and tools are also included so that readers can draw their own conclusions. To support this process, I have incorporated examples from our experience working with different types of organizations in which we applied the evolutionary model with the Partners & Success team.

This book is primarily aimed at executives and managers who wish to achieve significant improvements in their organizational climate and provides them with a set of tools and concepts so they can do this on their own. It is also of great value to all those involved in the world of people management and organizational change, as the book outlines how to make joint interventions between executives and the staff or the support role of Human Capital.

Chapter 1 focuses on what the author defines as collective intelligence and the process to build it, which is part of the foundation of the evolutionary model. It also shows the key principles of the evolutionary model. Chapter 2 explains that the organizational climate should be understood as a relationship. Chapter 3 elaborates on how to look at the work dimensions from the most to the least visible dimension. Chapter 4 gets into the responsibility that falls to each role in improving the organizational climate. Chapter 5 explores one of the most fundamental concepts of the model: the notion of maturity. This refers to the evolutionary nature of the organizational climate, a concept that opens up a set of possibilities by outlining what is advisable to do and what is not, depending on the organization’s level of maturity at any given moment. This topic is discussed in greater depth in Chapter 6, which identifies the levers that the organization and the leader can use to generate maturity in the process.

Chapter 7 delves into the variables considered indispensable not only to have a good organizational climate, but also to avoid occupational risks well in advance, by means of the survey and the organizational climate management plan. Chapter 8 addresses the difference between work dynamics and work practices and provides concrete tools to identify dynamics and improve them through effective practices. Chapter 9 develops the work environment intervention control panel, which is intended to serve as a basis for a comprehensive view of the variables to be managed. In this chapter, another key point of the evolutionary model is established: that a good evaluation of a company’s organizational climate should be based on the score given to the comprehensive work on the variables that affect the climate, rather than solely on the result of the survey.

For those who wish to apply the model in a consultative role, Chapter 10 shows a comprehensive view of an intervention using the evolutionary model.

At the end of the document, there is an epilogue on organizational climate and social maturity, since the way in which we manage the work environment is clearly linked to the level of maturity and social development that our society has reached. If organizational climate can mature and each of the roles involved is clear about how it can contribute to generating progress, why couldn’t we apply this concept to social maturity?

As you will see in the book, learning to manage the organizational climate is a process that implies that all those involved learn to achieve openness, build trust, develop the capacity to discuss difficult issues with respect, and express a difference of opinion without becoming enemies. If we can learn to do this, to better develop the “muscle” of a mature dialogue, why can’t we try to bring this learning into the social debate?

The author hopes that this will contribute to the development of a strategic issue for the evolution of organizations, which, when transformed, change society, its dynamics and the people who live in it.

SERGIO VERGARA VENEGAS

November 2014