Professor Prabhu Guptara challenged the audience to define what they understood to be an ‘intelligent’ organisation.

His definition was:

‘An organisation that has seamless alignment between the external perceptions of that organisation, the passions of the employees and the organisational systems and structures’.

Professor Guptara then went on to facilitate discussion around why, all too often, this type of alignment does not happen. He highlighted some of the key areas:

• Failure to unlock the potential of the talent within an organisation,
• Measurement systems not measuring the correct things,
• Recruitment systems not identifying the right kind of individuals to match the culture of the organisation and its value systems.

Alarmingly, he pointed out that without proper alignment, a group of highly intelligent people can be forced to be less intelligent than they are.  A key to improving the intelligence of an organisation is to look at how top management spend their time:-

Are managers accepting roles that should be taken further down in the organisation?

How do managers create time? – What do they stop doing?

Managers need to stand back from the detail and look at the whole job and help their colleagues to do the same.