Intelligence, emotions and organizations

I find no better explanation of the current uncertain times than this sentence by the socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson: “Human beings have Paleolithic emotions, medieval organizations and divine technology”. In this triangle of levers of change, one of the vectors is propelled towards infinity, while the other two barely sketch an intention to change.

The relationships between the three elements are shaping the future of the human being in this new Knowledge Age. All studies of future trends, based on technology, point to data-driven Artificial Intelligence and blockchain as the way forward. In a way, these trailers of those who entrust everything to technology show a complete break with emotions and organizations.

So-called Artificial Intelligence, the empire of algorithms and automation, aims to dispense with human biases to remove them from decision-making, avoid their mistakes, and ensure that the sidereal growth of technology is not weighed down by emotions.

Digital adolescents are uncomfortable with rules and prohibitions. Regulation is as bad for them as the mother who comes in screaming with orders to clean the room. We are fully in that difficult stage of growth, of permanent conflict, between the infinite possibilities of a new world and the desire to control the old one. Discovery versus nostalgia.

Technology is, curiously, the main driver of self-organization. The blockchain system has decentralization, open source and the absence of hierarchies in its DNA. They promote the so-called DAOs, Decentralised Autonomous Organizations, a revolution in organizations, with total transparency, new ways of voting and managing. Paradoxically, this lack of hierarchy is more conducive to computers than to people.

Having defined the two sides of the triangle starting from the vertex of technology, it remains to find out what the relationship between organizations and emotions is like. They were the big elephant in the room that nobody wanted to talk about. When they came to work, emotions were parked at the door. However, marketing, sales or customer service base their effectiveness on knowing and managing emotions.

Numerous studies already show that the degree of progress of an organization depends on the inner evolution of its top management. The most influential book of the past decade, Reinvesting Organizations, by Frederic Laloux, takes this idea as a point of support. Emotions, once again, conditioning the way organizations are governed.

In the evolution of human beings, we have understood organizations as wolf packs, armies, machines, families and, very recently, as living beings. Still the dominant paradigm remains that of managing a gear to make it more efficient, without attending to emotions.

Laloux’s book popularised the idea of transforming organizations, in support of their digitalization, which has accelerated with the forced confinements of the pandemic. In the last five years, many organizations have embarked on change processes to self-organise, the highest stage of organization, so that technology can further enhance their propulsion. But, the data says that 70% of these transformations fail in the attempt. Why? Without taking emotions out of the wardrobe, it is really difficult.

Machines, computers, have long since surpassed humans in getting things right, but they don’t know what they are doing at all. So they are a replacement for those who were looking for cheap, submissive labour. Data-driven organizations will be very efficient, but completely mechanistic. They lack purpose, even if they want to camouflage it with commercial slogans or corporate social responsibility campaigns. The so-called new work, the new organizations, are managed not from data, but from the search for the fullness of people.

The question, then, is why don’t we begin to know, manage and respect emotions, both our own and those of others? Or rather: why don’t we change our society to include emotions?

Because that would mean fighting two dragons. The first, education; that euphemism we generally use to avoid calling it what it really is today: indoctrination (no matter which ideology you feel more comfortable with). The second is that consumer society that promotes people with great needs and necessities that they only temporarily fill with credit cards.

So we make do with what Eduardo Galdeano so aptly and beautifully defined as “a culture of packaging, which despises content”. And we lose ourselves, with all its accelerations and distractions, in a simplistic culture of less than 140 characters, which would summarise all of the above as if it were a politician in an election campaign: men or machines.

“People who hide from their own inner world and diligently shape their lives according to social norms do so to avoid trouble. But hiding from the dark side of the mind does not defuse the threat”.

Deepak Chopra

And it is this maximalist vision, in which we need to place everything and everyone on some side, that prevents us from realising the lessons that the year 20 has brought us.

At this point, technology presents itself as a saviour. The rationale behind Artificial Intelligence is that it works better with more data. It is the opposite of what happens with people, who, after a certain amount of information, become blocked. For algorithms, the sum of all, multiplies. The more data you feed it, the more accurate it is.

This is what has driven the inclusion of technology in all sectors of life. Take telemedicine, for example, which now allows our health data to be held not just by our doctor, but by doctors all over the world. All this shared knowledge also accelerates the discovery of solutions and the eradication of diseases, as we have seen with vaccines.

Organizations that remove controls and hierarchies, giving a voice to the people as a whole, are harnessing the wisdom of people’s collective intelligence, like algorithms. This is the basis of the new social order, in which humans and machines will coexist, which will be inspired by Nature, and which will contribute to its regeneration.

The organizations that are succeeding in this new social contract, with collaborative models such as Teal or liberated enterprises, are based on people who are able to overcome their personal fears, who are truly free, and who trust that when you share what you know, the sum wins. On people who are whole enough to know that all positions have some part of reason, without dogmas, nor do they have the absolute Truth. The best solutions for the new times will be those that emerge from this collective intelligence.

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This is a translation with Deepl.com of the article originally published on 9brains.es: https://9brains.es/tecnologia-emociones-y-organizaciones/