By | Published On: January 24, 2024 |

What is Systems Intelligence and why is it important?

In previous work I’ve completed and in my talk on Strategically Managing Change for leaders, I talk about how executives are wired. I refer to a different type of intelligence that they use but which not everyone seems to possess. I’ve called this Systems Intelligence, although it would appear I’m not the only person/ Psychologist to call it that. My breakdown of this type of thinking is as follows; it’s the ability to walk in to almost any situation or business and look at it. Then decide how it could be done differently or better! Executives who do this are very capable people but it isn’t a feature of academic intelligence. Indeed, how we are assessed at school is irrelevant by the time we’re adults. Common sense is a very useful approach as is emotional intelligence, but systems intelligence, is a game changer. Have I got you interested? Read on to hear about the qualities of it,  and how you can look for it in your employees.

  1. Taking responsibility

Brian Tracy is a very well-known self-help guru. It is his belief that many people don’t know how to be an adult. What this entails is the transition from expecting other people to look after you, to the stage of looking after yourself. When we are young, we are encouraged to let other people do everything for us. They feed and clothe us, teach us right from wrong, and it is necessary for a young person to be highly dependent on an adult.

However, the difficulty comes when that individual becomes an adult, but they still operate or think in the mode of ‘other people’ will take care of me. This can extend to you as their boss, or the government and the upshot of this is a lack of self-reliance. It can lead to a dependence on others to solve problems for them. It means they often have high expectations that someone else will tell them what to do, and they can wait for the answers.

  1. Internal Locus of Control or Bridge

Struggling to take responsibility for yourself can come from a trait called locus of control. When someone is an external, this is the person who is impacted by everything that happens outside of them.  It also means they default to waiting for someone to tell them what to do. It is not ad easy for this person to be self-reliant because their nature is wired to wait for other people solve their problems. The result? It can be difficult for an ‘external’ to take responsibility for their own decisions. Mostly, because they can lack confidence around the quality and the effectiveness of their decisions.

  1. An effective response to challenge

The difficulty we have as leaders, is that life is about challenge. There is no time when we are not going to be experiencing potential challenges in life.  But, what we want is people who have what we might call an ‘effective response’ to challenge. That means they stay calm, they can decide about the situation, and therefore take responsibility for the solution to that situation. In my experience, this is only prevalent when someone is an internal or a bridge. That is because the word responsibility literally breaks down into response, and ability. So, people need to stay calm and problem solve the situation, then make decisions.

  1. Problem Solving & Decision Making

Which brings me to two of the strongest features of systems intelligence. The ability to problem solve, and then on the back of that, decide or plan. This person does so to the best of their ability given the information they have at the time. The more they get used to doing this, the more they build confidence around their ability. Then the more relaxed they become when faced with challenge.

  1. Big Picture Thinking

Challenge ceases to become overwhelming and for the most part they start to break it into bite size chunks. This enables a member of the team to take a chunk, or they themselves to move forward by tackling that first chunk. This is what it truly means to be a bigger picture thinker. What comes with the territory of systems intelligence is they can see that if we do ‘X’, it could affect ‘Y’.  Therefore, they don’t make knee jerk choices.

So, they: –

  • stay calm
  • step back from the situation,
  • amass all the facts,
  • take a bite size chunk
  • plan their action/s
  • execute or act on those plans

You can teach people to do this even if you don’t find they are very confident, or an internal thinker.

  1. Takes Accountability

This means the final quality is that they take accountability for their decisions. Accountability is quite different from responsibility. Accountability means that an individual can take the ultimate decision that they might be in the wrong and apologise for that. This would be the case even if they make a choice someone else acts on, but which results in a problem they must resolve. We all need people who take accountability for their choices.

So, what do I recommend?

  1. There is no one solution exactly, because it is possible that you are looking for genetic traits. You may be able to add the locus of control questionnaire to your recruitment process. It wouldn’t be a reliable indicator on its own, but with other personality questionnaires, you could get a comprehensive impression of where someone is capable and the experience they have.
  2. Ask experiential questions at interview stage. A ‘What would you do if you had to deal with frequent challenge/ taking accountability for something you didn’t feel was your fault?’ These are a good idea. That way you get an indication of whether they have any experience of coping with challenges, being a big picture thinker, or taking accountability.
  3. It isn’t necessary that someone must be mature (as in older), to have systems intelligence. They may just be practised in applying it. So, you also want confidence in someone. The old adage that you can train skill, but you cannot train attitude. If they have some of the above and you can see they are keen to learn, that’s a good sign!

Let me know if you have any questions?