Ben I was a little taken aback by your response [partly because I didn't
realise it was your thread].
My point was about IQ not about intelligence. please do NOT drop the
thread if it is about intelligence, please do if your definition of
intelligence is based on IQ.
My point is that IQ is a crap measure of intelligence [it's racist and
sexist, and innaccurate], and i am deeply sceptical of any psychometric
test that claim to measure it, or any related concepts like 'mental
agility' or whatever. I'm even sceptical about psychometrics based on
Gardner's multiple intelligences, although that would be a quantum leap of
an improvement.
There must be other ways to assess the capability of potential staff other
than resumes and IQ tests, and I'm sure that if we ask this list we'll be
deluged with ideas (maybe Myers briggs?? )[AND as you know the receiving
organisation determines how much of that potential gets harnessed, anyway,
so its a moot point -do you want geniuses or team players? and all that
debate...]
>Right now I work for Novell and we're in tough competition with Microsoft.
I know, I've followed your fate keenly, I'm rooting for you guys, partly
because netware in the days of DOS was rilly neat, and partly because of
the Allende/Chile/Beer link and partly because I am less than totally
enamoured of the tactics of william gates III... [last bit checked by
lawyer]
One of the
>major reasons why Microsoft is so competitive is because they hire extremely
>intelligent people. Bill Gate's sums it up this way, "we hire the smartest
>people, and
>then let them do their thing."
maybe. I think that might be diversionary PR. my guess is it's more to do
with the lock, scan, focus, flux, relock thing that they do so swiftly
with strategy [internet explorer v3 in less than a year, leaner and meaner
than netscapes 3, which ironically is left looking like a bloated
microsoft product [for example word 6 for the mac]...
>Novell has traditionally hired people with good resumes. There's been very
>little
>consideration for the native intelligence of the applicant. As a result we
>spent an
>enormous amount of time trying to train people who just simply can't adapt
>to the
>complex environment they find themselves in
well certainly training won't work in this environment, but/and I don't
think the thing you want to hire is described by 'native intelligence', and
maybe hiring people with good college backgrounds [if that's what you
meant] is just hiring narrow minds stuffed with facts in the exam frenzy,
who are disconnected from real personal learning...
> I have no choice but>to believe that the intelligence of the people
>within an organization will largely>determine how quickly the organization
>_can_ learn.
Well I believe that its *more* like the organisation stopping people
performing, but I don't want to do a sterile re-run of the nature [IQ of
hirees] versus nurture [organisation constraints] debate,, but I observe
that both of us are saying 'largely' and 'more' rather than 'al'l or'
nothing' which means theres plenty of scope for dialogue. Actually a
non-sterile, complex adaptive system, population genetics, ecology
influenced debate on this would be very interesting: like:
can any teams really work wonders when allowed to, or do they have to be
zippy individuals to start with? and what is the role of management in
relation to the team, to issues of orientation identity and to intent and
to 'out there'?
hmmm. interesting ...
nice reply: thanks ben.
--from Arthur Battram, organiser of the LGMB project 'Tools for Learning': helping local authorities to apply complexity concepts to personal and organisational learning. apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk "complexity is in here... and simplicity is out there...if we want it to be..."
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>