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.

I recently watched the Cirque de Soleil interpretation of the Beatles music called Love.  I have always enjoyed the Beatles’ music but I am by no means an aficionado. I was struck by a quote from The Rolling Stone magazine by Paul McCartney, that was tucked in some the hotel promo literature, about the circumstance in which the album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was developed.

“The ideas were coming fast and thick. All sorts of new ideas-artistic, political and musical … We had a lot of friends in the music world and in the art world, and there was a big cross-fertilization … It was a great time for experimentation, and it all found its way into our music …” [1]

I did a little digging to find out what was going on in that moment.  The album cover includes face shots of people who had influenced the Beatles … an amazing diversity of people … from Charlie Chaplin to Albert Einstein … from May West to Carl Jung.

The album is considered to be their greatest achievement, breaking new ground in rock music.  Notice what “came together” for the Beatles in that moment: diversity of thought combined with an environment in which that diversity could fuse into a new form. Think about social networks in this larger context … as the combined sources of influence that can be brought to bear on the characteristics of a desired outcome.

The Beatles intuitively extracted from each influence those qualities that could contribute to their work. This lends another dimension to the concept of appreciation … the ability to see what contributes without becoming distracted by what does not. Social networks are not just about who can contribute but also about the qualities, attributes and ideas that they bring to the development of a new form.

I have been following CEO firings lately. One common thread that is clear from reading news accounts (and in the case of Chrysler, conversations with people who watched the workings of the inner circle) … in all cases, the CEOs who failed actually worked hard to diminish the diversity of thought that was offered to them. In some cases they made outright strategic errors, undermined the company and lost their jobs as a result. In others, they simply ended up with bland conservative decisions that slowly eroded the company’s cutting edge … and lost their jobs.

Inspired thinkers always have social networks with great variety, including Thomas Edison whom we often refer to as a great example of a lone inventor. They don’t try to make them into melting pots. In fact they appreciate and invite the diversity of thinking that exists within them.

I would be interested in hearing examples of both the consequences of limiting social networks, and those moments when, because of the presence of a diverse network, old thinking got broken apart to make way for new understanding.

____________________________________

[1] Paul McCartney, in an interview with The Rolling Stone, on the development of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. From the Inroom Magazine of the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.

The Lean Enterprise Institute recently noted the results of a poll on the biggest problems faced during the implementation of lean initiatives. One of the most frequent answers was: resistance from mid-level managers.

We are all resisters. We stand at the barricades of our thought systems fending off, ignoring and otherwise resisting myriad ideas, products and just plain “stuff” every day. The issue is not whether we resist but what we resist. We resist when we assume that something doesn’t contribute to what we care about, when we fear that we will have to give up something that we want or because we don’t understand something that is being offered.

Since we are all good at resisting, the question is not, “How do we overcome resistance?” but rather, “How do we pull inspired thought to the things that matter to the organization?”

Here are some things to remember.

Stay with Pull

You can persuade, cajole, threaten, bribe (yes I said bribe as in: “I will do this for you if you get on board.”) or you can use force or coercion. You can dictate and enforce … but none of these will create buy-in. They may even send resistance underground and create compliance if that serves the interest of the person who is resisting.

Compliance, although it may look good to the observer, comes at a high price. The price of compliance is that although you may get good enough you will not get the margin of difference … unless you want people to get good at “going along to get along.”

Instead, start by creating pull instead of push. This is the attraction or influence people experience in response to something that matters to them. Gripping sources of pull are those that have compelling values. They are squarely focused on big value to the customer or client and create stretch for the organization; they are inclusive; they rise above differences. Therefore, they pull unity of purpose.

Whether you are engaged in change management or a lean initiative, ratchet up the significance of the initiative as it relates to the success of the company and nest the lean initiative within that context

Use It as an Opportunity to Create the Margin of Difference

Move toward the resistance with appreciation. Respect the fact that we are all resistors of those things that don’t matter to us and listen for what does matter.

Embedded within the static of resistance is often information which, if incorporated, could seed a dramatic shift in the quality of the initiative. Look for and pull the ideas and concepts which, once surfaced, push the boundaries of current thinking. It may take some patience as you listen through resistance. When someone says, “This will never work.” An appreciative response would be “What would have to change in order for it to succeed?” The byproduct of using pull of course is that as soon as people begin to make a valid contribution they begin to own it.

Teach the Tools of Pull

The margin of difference begins with developing mastery at distinguishing between what to resist and what to pull. Train people to notice what they are pulling and help them understand that their experiences reflect what they have pulled. Therefore, the quality of business processes, the nimbleness of social networks, the quality of relationships within those networks, the quality of conversations, the engagement processes and the quality of individual thinking and work processes all reliably reflect and are pulled by individual and collective beliefs, intents and purposes.

So when you are faced with resistance, start with pull. Pull big purpose, pull embedded ideas nested within resistance, and then teach the individual skills that enable people to continuously discern and choose what they will pull.

I would like to hear your thoughts about what creates and drives resistance and how you have dealt with it.