Reference no: EM132879992

Select an organization and consider its distributed intelligence.

Think back to the systems thinking disciplines: personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, mental models, and systems thinking. Can you identify any simple rules within distributed intelligence that apply to human organizations? What might be some advantages of distributed intelligence vis-à-vis command and control leadership? Does all intelligence reside at the top of the organization, or is it distributed throughout the organization? A related topic for the interested reader is distributed cognition, which was the dissertation topic of one of our students.

As Hutchins (2000) noted, "cognitive processes may be distributed across the members of a social group, cognitive processes may be distributed in the sense that the operation of the cognitive system involves coordination between internal and external (material or environmental) structure, and processes may be distributed through time in such a way that the products of earlier events can transform the nature of later events" (p. 1).

Skills to learn this week include an understanding of distributed intelligence and some applications to leadership and management. As organizations become more complex, so, too, must leadership skills. Why? One answer to this is for the interested reader to review Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety, which unfortunately is outside the scope of this class. Another suggestion is to take a class or spend some time studying game theory, which is also outside the scope of this class, but something leaders should understand.
To prepare for this Discussion, review the provided resources and those you can find to learn more about distributed intelligence with applications to leadership. Think of this discussion as a classroom presentation, wherein you post your ideas and respond to questions.

Hints

-Start with a brief analysis of your selected organization's structure, describing it in systems terms and evaluating its effectiveness.

-Explain how distributed intelligence might contribute to improving your organization or to your organization becoming a learning organization.

-Explain any advantages of distributed intelligence for leading and managing the organization.