The Power Of The Collective

The Maginot Line (Per Wikipedia): The fortification system, built at huge expense of time, money and material resources, utterly failed to contain the Germans in World War II. The term is sometimes used today to describe any comically ineffective protection.

Collective ability, in command of all enterprise resources including technology, is the civilian equivalent of the coordinated and disciplined might of the Germans in WW-II. The similarity ends with the effect of coordinated power. It has to be induced to ward off adverse politics and cannot be established by the command control culture that drives the army. Personnel must enjoy autonomy of thought and control over their actions without sinking into chaos.

The compelling way of working fosters the collective by anticipating the permissible actions and driving their execution. Dependence upon discipline is eliminated. Reliable and intelligent application of security ensures access is confined to selected personnel. In addition, space, time, continuity, mobility, focus, direction, anxiety, etc., are all easily satisfied by the automatic organization of data, information and knowledge to assure adoption. The leadership acquires powerful means to create and influence the collective mind in the virtual space, and is spared the frustration of reasoning with inaccessible and distributed minds.

Survey results at Calgon Carbon (~1999) establish the power of collective ability: For every 10 percent increase in trust and teamwork, the company can achieve a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in financial results within two years.

The only protection against collective intelligence is another collective intelligence focused on the pursuit of success.