When Michael Jordan started playing for the Chicago Bulls, Coach Phil Jackson gave him a career-changing piece of advice. He explained that Michael would become great if instead of competing with his other teammates he helped them all play at their peak. Michael got it. He became great but so did others like Scotty Pippin ... and the team was memorable.

There is a major inflection point occurring right now. It is not about basketball or even sports. It is about how people develop concepts and ideas. But it could be every bit as career changing as the shift that Phil Jackson inspired in Michael Jordan.

In order to understand why, let’s review a few numbers. There are 31 billion public searches on Google every month up from 2.7 billion in 2006. Facebook took only 2 years to reach a total of 30 million users. My space has 112 million users with 20 million hits per day. Twitter has grown from 4 to 20 million users in the first six months of 2009. Add to that a recent estimate that the amount of new technical information doubles every two years. That means that ½ of what students learn in the 1st year of college will be outdated by the 3rd year.[1]

People are sharing information in unprecedented numbers ... not only about their personal lives ... but about ideas. Knowledge is growing exponentially. This isn’t because people are smarter ... more intellectual versions of Michael Jordan nailing three pointers. It is because there are more versions of the Chicago Bulls. We are seeing the leading edge of a major inflection point that is resetting the way we develop products of thought ... one in which no one works in isolation of other people’s ideas. Just as a great basketball team is collective, all intelligence is collective.

As is true of all inflection points, those that recognize it and develop the competencies to leverage it will achieve new levels of performance. Those that don’t will have ever-diminishing influence which will come straight out of the bottom line. There are skills and competencies that are unique to the ability to create collective intelligence that is inspired. Where do you start?

• Build social networks that include diversity and dissent.
• Build social capital that sustains the tough conversations.
• Create conversations that break apart and reconstruct ideas to create new forms.
• Create fluid structures and connections that transform the way ideas are developed.
• Think in a way that triggers people’s best instincts.

The companies, and the people in them, that learn to leverage collective intelligence will be well-positioned to ride the upward curve of the new inflection point.


[1] Source for this last statement is a You Tube video entitled: “Did you know?” produced by Sony.

Inspired mind is the source of great inventions and breakthroughs of all kinds as well as the simplest improvements to a process. This skill doesn’t just apply to the so-called high achievers such as the mountain climbers, Nobel Peace Prize winners, athletes, inventers, novelists and composers of the world. Inspired mind can come from anywhere about everything ... from the mundane to the achievement of major outcomes ... from responding to emails to coding software ... from the simple acts of getting the job done to corporate strategy.

Inspired mind goes beyond those stupendous breakthroughs that we all read about. It is an approach to thinking that triggers the best instincts in yourself and others. Bring to mind the people you like to be around ... the kind of people that bring out your best. Maybe it is their outlook on life. Maybe they are just upbeat. But when you are with those people ... or even think about them, you get a lift. Even thinking about them right now may make you smile. You may have noticed the contagious light-hearted atmosphere that they breed. And in the process they manage to trigger your best instincts.

The inspired mind focuses on what can be even when others say it is impossible, or not feasible, or impractical or it has never been done before, and they maintain that orientation so persistently that it becomes routine for them. They do it not just because of the inspired outcomes that it produces but also because inspired mind is its own reward. And that is what propels their careers. They not only reach beyond the edges of what others believe is possible ... but they also enjoy the ride. These people are having fun! How can that be? What is their secret?

Tell me about your seminars on how I can use inspired mind to propel my career

A man sat at a metro station in Washington D.C. on a cold January morning and started to play the violin. He played Bach for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3-year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. Two days before his subway concert, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100 each.

His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend? Journalist Gene Weingarten was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his thought-provoking analysis of the experiment.

Is that a story about taste? Or as some bloggers argued after the incident, did people quickly move on because a violin is too high pitched to be appreciated outside of a Metro stop? Is it yet one more allegory about how we are so harried that we don't take time to smell the roses? Or is it a simple case of confirmation bias created by the expectation that in that setting the quality of music would be mediocre at best? More than likely it is all of the above ... except for the children. I will return to them later.

In the presence of that set of triggers, the only thing that would have caused people to stop, pay attention and then to prize the concert would have been a high level of mastery at appreciating both Bach and violin music. To hear at a level that enabled people to distinguish virtuoso quality music while rushing to get somewhere is highly unlikely. That level of recognition would have had to occur in perhaps ten seconds in a milieu filled with distracting noise and contradicting triggers. Perhaps an accomplished violin player would have picked up the information quickly enough ... or would have been curious long enough to stop and revel in the beauty that was coming her way.

Joshua Bell was sending out inspiring triggers that found no home. Suppose he had been positioned next to a well-crafted beautiful sign that said:

This is Joshua Bell. He is one of the most celebrated violinists in the world. He is playing some of Bach's most beautiful unaccompanied violin sonatas on a Stradivarius violin for which he paid over two million dollars. Bostonians recently paid $200 per person to hear him. This concert is being brought to you by the Washington Post.

I would hazard a guess that the Metro would have had to deal with a massive congestion problem as the first few stopped and read the sign were quickly joined by others who also read the sign and finally joined by others who couldn't even see the sign but were attracted by the crowd.

Same Player, Same Music but an Entire Array of Additional Triggers

What would the sign have triggered? The graphics signaled: this is a class act. The brief intro to Joshua Bell and Bach signaled: this is a very high quality event. The price paid by Bostonians signaled: this is a bargain. The Washington Post reference signaled: generosity, opportunity and answered the core question, "Why would someone so famous come here and play for nothing?" The entire sign and its contents, along with the fact that it was occurring at a Metro stop, signaled: this is a rare opportunity.

In the presence of that palette of triggers, even those people who were not familiar with classical music may have brought to that moment all of the listening acuity and appreciation that they could muster. Experienced listeners would have been inspired. There would have no doubt been a quiet dynamic that moved through the crowd that, though unspoken, encouraged high quality listening and appreciation.

I predict that mothers would have nudged their children forward or placed them on their shoulders rather than tugging them away and that more than a few busy schedules would have been adjusted. My final prediction is that the concert would have ended with a roar of applause.

Now consider the actual array of triggers that were in play on that day. What was going through people's minds? "No really good musician would have cause to play at a metro stop." "If it is free, it isn't worth wasting my time for." "I have a schedule to meet."

Notice the difference in what people saw and heard between actual event and the hypothetical but completely plausible alternative.

• The difference in range of information ... appreciation for the quality of music that would have taken people to their own thresholds of understanding
• The shift in the crowd from independent, unrelated individuals to a collective temporarily-bonded by a common desire to share this event and more than likely signaling each other in ways that heightened the appreciation and reduced distracting triggers.

Picture yourself in each of the two scenarios just described. Notice the difference in instincts that each triggers in you ... from rushing on your way to prizing a rare opportunity to experience beauty. And imagine the difference in how you would have experienced the world including the people around you.

That difference is inspired. Inspired is a state in which we experience ourselves and the world around us from the context of our most lofty instincts. It is not limited to religious fervor, or those flashes of insight in which new understanding bursts forth or those moments or hours or even days in which a high quality of creative and productive activity courses through us with such power, clarity and often beauty that it seems to be coming from somewhere else.

Inspiration can frame any moment and when it does, the world looks different. We experience the people around us differently. We see more and hear more and at a higher order. When inspiration frames an entire group that is engaged in joint activity, the product is inspired collective intelligence.

There are two types of experiments that help to explain what it is that creates inspired collective intelligence. The first is Jack Treynor's jelly-beans-in-the-jar experiment. The second we will call the trivial pursuit experiment.

Start With the Power of Collective Wisdom

Jack Treynor, the investment guru, conducted a now famous experiment in which he asked his class to estimate how many jelly beans there were in a jar. When added together and averaged, the group's estimate was 871. There were actually 850 beans contained within the jar. Only one student had made a better guess. The now famous jelly-beans-in-the-jar experiment has been replicated countless times with similar results. Invariably collective intelligence is superior to that of all but the occasional rogue genius.

Add the Power of Positive Triggers

The second experiment was conducted by Dutch social scientists. Forty six of the hardest Trivial Pursuit questions were asked of two different groups of students. One group was asked to think about the idea of a college professor for a few moments before starting the game. The second group focused on soccer hooligans before starting the game. Those who focused on a college professor got over 57% right. Those who focused on soccer hooligans got just over 42% right. That's a 26% difference in outcome caused by nothing but a difference in focus!

The students did not even know they were being triggered. They had no idea that their performance was affected by their focus. Such is the power of triggers to affect collective intelligence. We continuously send these triggers to each other and to ourselves through the thoughts that we process.

Focus Those Triggers on People's Best Instincts

What distinguishes an inspired social network is that people trigger each others' best instincts. That is the secret to inspired collective intelligence. It starts with triggers ... those flashes of thought that sometimes connect us to the best in ourselves ... sometimes the worst ... and often to something in between. These triggers play a huge part in our individual and joint competence to solve problems and to render inspired outcomes.

What are best instincts? They are our most optimal version of our selves, pure and simple. Inspired collective intelligence is simply the product of a group of people interacting in a way that enables them to leverage the best that each of them brings to the conversation. When people trigger the best instincts of each other, they create collective outcomes that are always superior to anything that any of them could have produced alone. And these outcomes are more inspired than anything they could have produced together had anything other than their best instincts been triggered.

And You Get Inspired Collective Intelligence

When, within a network, people inspire the best instincts from each other, some amazing things happen. The network expands in size and diversity. The quality of network membership improves. Collective competence increases. People openly share more resources in the form of ideas. How can that be?

What are Triggers and What Do They Have to Do with Inspired Collective Intelligence?

A trigger is anything that sets off a response in us. It can emanate from our own thoughts or from something in the environment. We perpetually spark or trigger each other. A trigger created by someone else fires off a set of thoughts and feelings in you. These triggers ... either positive or negative ... can escalate in a self-reinforcing explosion. They may be disparaging or inspiring, cynical or hopeful, suspicious or trusting. They may invite a contest of ideas or the joint development of understanding. They can connect to your best or worst instincts or anywhere in between. The possibilities are endless.

In the Trivial Pursuit study, the researchers chose the focus ... think like a professor or soccer hooligan. The participants accepted that choice of focus even though they had no idea of the way in which their choice would affect their performance. When we pay attention to something, we trigger resonant feelings, beliefs, and understandings.

We exchange obvious triggers through language and non-verbal cues that are easy to read. But we also exchange them in countless subtle ways, many of which are non-conscious. Many of these triggers are so subtle that we don't even know that we are sending them or receiving them ... a look ... a roll of the eyes ... a word that activates an entire array of stereotypes.

We can trigger the highest and best instincts or those that are far less inspiring. We can trigger competence or incompetence. We can trigger hopes or fears ... inspiration or desperation. The trigger activates a set of beliefs which frames the meaning we make of it and that then pulls a constellation of competencies and behavioral attributes.

Competence Triggers and Inspired Triggers

There are two kinds of triggers that are critical to the development of inspired collective intelligence: competence triggers and inspired triggers. Competence triggers set off responses connected with effectiveness and are those which we most frequently use in companies. No matter what the task, they trigger us to do it well. Competence triggers, of course, won't do you any good if they are focused on the wrong thing. For example, if you are simply trying to get to work on time, they won't prompt you to stop and listen to Joshua Bell. They will just help you become accomplished at getting to work on time.

Competence triggers serve us well. Competence triggers alone accounted for a 25% difference in Trivial Pursuit scores. Competence triggers, depending on what they are focused on, help us to collectively think, analyze and perform more effectively. They pull performance from us. They activate mental acuity. Collective intelligence is produced when people think together effectively using competence triggers.

But let's look at what inspired triggers do for us. Inspired triggers connect us to our best instincts. They are the triggers of laughter and joy and love. They tie us to our higher, more inclusive values. They switch on the inner circuits that cause us to be moved by a piece of music when it is well conceived and masterfully delivered, no matter what the genre. In the presence of inspired triggers, we see and hear nuances and connections that we otherwise miss.

Inspired collective intelligence is a product of both competence and inspired triggers. When people are grappling for understanding and they exchange both competence and inspired triggers, the result is vibrant co-discovery. They are approaching each others' contributions with the same quality of listening that would cause them to be moved by Joshua Bell.

Now take that into your company. Most companies leave twenty-five percent of their smarts on the table. They not only don't use it, they don't even know that it is available. They are paying for good minds and then wasting twenty-five percent of the resource. What happened in the Washington Metro does not need to happen in your company. Just as surely as a well-crafted sign would have made music lovers out of thousands of metro riders, a shift in triggers can do the same for your company.

No matter how well you execute, you will only succeed if you execute on the right thing.

The Twenty Five Percent Difference

Most companies leave twenty-five percent of their smarts on the table. They not only don’t use it, they don’t even know that it is available. They are paying for good minds and then wasting twenty-five percent of the resource. Waste of any kind, of course, degrades the bottom line. And when the economy is in the tank, no company can afford waste.

But waste of intellect ... waste of the ability to quickly reset and seize opportunities that competitors miss? That can be debilitating.

The secret to that additional twenty-five percent lies in creating inspired collective intelligence. Inspired collective intelligence is, to the way people think together, what lean is to the processes the Japanese instituted for manufacturing. Anyone who is familiar with lean manufacturing methods understands the exponential increase in cost that is exacted as defects move through a manufacturing line. They also understand the revolution in quality that Toyota and Honda have unleashed as a result. The Japanese invested in process improvement when they were regarded as non-competitive in the world auto market. At the very moment when their backs were to the wall, they invested rather than retrenching.

As in the case of lean manufacturing, “defects” in collective intelligence are easily missed. And defects in a thinking process can be far more devastating to a company’s viability than one that simply requires the replacement of a part.

Inspired collective intelligence closes the twenty-five percent gap. It enables companies to access the entire diversity of aptitude, intelligence, acumen, experience and just plain smarts that now exists throughout their company and mine it continuously. The result is a quality of collective intelligence that far exceeds what anyone could have produced alone. Because of that twenty-five percent they are joined ... when they most need it ... by people who have the very diversity of ideas that enable them to get it right the first time.

In order to squeeze out that extra twenty-five percent, people get so practiced at creating inspired collective intelligence that they are able to apply it to anything that matters from strategy to simple decisions. The twenty-five percent difference enables companies to continuously create subtle pivots in strategy that keep them on course no matter what happens to the economy.

Invaluable? We agree. Impossible? Not true. Read on.

There are two types of experiments that help to explain what it is that creates inspired collective intelligence. The first is Jack Treynor’s jelly-beans-in-the-jar experiment. The second, we will call the trivial pursuit experiment.

Start With the Power of Collective Intelligence

Jack Treynor, the investment guru, conducted a now famous experiment in which he asked his class to estimate how many jelly beans there were in a jar. When added together and averaged, the group's estimate was 871. There were actually 850 beans contained within the jar. Only one student had made a better guess. The now famous jelly-beans-in-the-jar experiment has been replicated countless times with similar results. Invariably collective intelligence is superior to that of all but the occasional rogue genius.

Add the Power of Competence Triggers

The second experiment was conducted by Dutch social scientists. Forty six of the hardest Trivial Pursuit questions were asked of two different groups of students. One group was asked to think about the idea of a college professor for a few moments before starting the game. The second group focused on soccer hooligans before starting the game. Those who focused on a college professor got over 57% right. Those who focused on soccer hooligans got just over 42% right. That’s a 26% difference in outcome caused by nothing but a difference in focus!

The students did not even know they were being triggered. They had no idea that their performance was affected by their focus. Such is the power of triggers to affect collective intelligence. We continuously send these triggers to each other and to ourselves through the thoughts that we process.

Focus Those Triggers on People’s Best Instincts

What distinguishes an inspired social network is that people trigger each others’ best instincts. What are best instincts? They are our most optimal version of our selves – pure and simple. That is the secret to inspired collective intelligence. It starts with triggers ... those flashes of thought that sometimes connect us to the best in ourselves ... sometimes the worst ... and often to something in between. Both competence and best instinct triggers play a huge part in our individual and joint capacity to solve problems and to render inspired outcomes.

Inspired collective intelligence is simply the product of a group of people interacting in a way that enables them to leverage the best that each of them brings to the conversation. When people trigger the both the competence and the best instincts of each other they create collective outcomes that are always superior to anything that any of them could have produced alone.

This blog is for all of the people who are caught in the middle … who say “The margin of difference is all well and good if you have enlightened leadership … but what if you don’t?” What if you are in the middle of an organization that is anything but inspired … and thinks that what they are doing is just fine … and managers who send the clear message to anyone who doesn’t agree … “don’t rock the boat.”  Or what if you are working for a manager who seems to have no clue or curiosity about what an inspired organization could be? Or what if you work for an organization that seems to always be embarking on change initiatives that never get any traction?

If this is where you and your organization seem to be living then all of this stuff about the margin of difference just makes you more frustrated.  You say “Yeah … sure … where? … In what organization? … Show me one just one that has made this kind of transition.”

Caught in the middle goes to the core of questions like “What do I do when I am stuck in a job that I hate but that I have to stay with because I need the money?”

Where do you start? First of all, you don’t start by saying “I’ve got to change this place … or person” … or by saying “This place will never change so why try?”  You start by taking a line from Gandhi: Be the change you want to create.  You use the frustration to put yourself at the center of the possibility of change.

This means that you use the most powerful leverage you have available: how you think about three things:  the outcomes you are working to achieve, the processes you put into practice , and how you think about the people and organization that surrounds you.  I am going to explore this more specifically in future blog posts, but first I’d like to share what it is like when you make your thinking process the center of your attention.  I am going to borrow a page from sports to illustrate what I am leading up to.

Even If you don’t play tennis or golf or baseball, you probably know what is meant by the “sweet spot”.  Remember that a sweet spot is a tiny area of a golf club or tennis racket or baseball bat that produces a great shift in accuracy and velocity.  It sounds and feels differently to the observer and the hitter.  Finding the sweet spot, in itself, creates great satisfaction beyond what it does to the ball.

There is a version of the sweet spot in every area of activity.  It is easy to see it in sports: nailing a land in gymnastics or landing a perfect jump in skating.  But it also occurs in everything you do … coaching, dancing, sailing, parenting, being with friends, and producing work products and relationships.  No matter what you are up to, the sweet spot is equivalent to what Tiger Woods seems to mean when he says that he is “on his game.”

In other words, whether it is applied to relationships, the outcomes of your work or the processes you use, a sweet spot is landing the best version of each challenge.  And you know you have nailed it because it produces a unique experience.

Hitting the sweet spot is very satisfying.  Once you have hit the sweet spot in any area of activity, you want to repeat it. And it doesn’t matter whether you are in the middle, at the top, or the bottom of your organization’s hierarchy … reaching for the sweet spot is something you can achieve … it not only gives you great satisfaction in the achieving of it but it always produces an outcome that will be at the margin of difference.  It even begins to shift the system of which you are a part. You begin to become the change you wanted to create and in the process change what goes on around you.

This blog is based on the forthcoming book: The Margin of Difference: Moving from Good Enough to Inspired Organizations.