Implementing Change: Individual Intelligence and Business Behavior in Change Implementation

There can be a tendency in business and in life to fixate on the value of individual intelligence. In fact , people who graduate from Ivy League establishments are waymore enthusiastically employed due to the perception that more intelligent students attend those universities. Indeed, in the right situations, it is hard 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 rather than the talent of people.

A historical example of this concept would be the movement of large groups of soldiers during battles before the modern time. In the days of Napoleon or the Civil War, the kind of accepted method of attack was for 2 groups of soldiers to face eachother on an open field and to advance on eachother. So long as both groups adhered to this technique, the infantrymen involved handled implementing change, which involved moving forward, reasonably well. This took place as the mass of infantrymen were responding as a unit with tiny individual intelligence being employed for the task.

If one side chose to change the technique and engage in flank attacks, the situation changed significantly. In flank attacks, the enemy doesn't approach immediately but moves in from the sides. In this scenario itis probable that at the individual level, the rank and file soldier knows what's occurring as well as what has to happen. Despite the individual intelligence to recognize the reality of the situation, flank attacks were enormously successful maneuvers when executed correctly. The success of the flank attack can be imputed largely to the inability of the soldiers as a group to go about implementing change in the way it needed to occur.

When implementing change in an organization, the same truth applies. Very bright people may recognize the necessity of the change, but lack the ability to enact it at the group level. Their individual intelligence is less important in that case than the capability of the organization as a whole to engage in unified behavior.

For more information, please see our website: Implementing Change