Business IQ Not Singular But A Complex Set Of Intelligences

Is there such a thing as ‘business intelligence’?

The theory of a single intelligence, easily measurable through IQ tests, is no longer seen as relevant. The small range of aptitudes, usually some combination of verbal, quantitative, and analytical skills that make up most standardised tests such as the GMAT, LSAT, GRE, SAT, etc., are now starting to fall out of favour with institutions; several US institutions have already eliminated the GRE as an entrance requirement for admission to their graduate schools.

The insight that has contributed the most to the displacement of limited models of IQ is the theory of multiple intelligences by the educational psychologist Howard Gardner, who pointed to a whole range of ‘intelligences’—linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, spatial, personal, spiritual, existential, and moral.

Human potential is far larger than what is measurable through limited intelligence tests. Indeed, throughout the ages—and around the globe—human society has idealised different qualities in individuals. The ancient Greeks valued physical agility, rational judgment, and virtuous behaviour. Romans prized the virtue of masculine courage. Islam cherished the holy soldier. And traditional Chinese society, influenced by the philosophy of Confucius, came to value the person skilled in music, chess, calligraphy and drawing.

Intelligence, as we understand it today, was scarcely one of these classic qualities. In fact, Gardner argues persuasively, it is only in the last few centuries that the idea of the intelligent person has become central to Western culture. The meaning of such a person, too, has continued to shift.

In traditional schools, it described a person who could master classical languages and mathematics. In business settings, it was someone who could identify commercial opportunities, take meaningful risks, build institutions, and keep the books balanced and stockholders satisfied. In the age of empire, the intelligent person was the one who could be sent to remote corners of the globe and could follow orders competently to shape a capable administration.

At the turn of the millennium, Gardner argues, two kinds of ‘intelligent’ persons have risen to the forefront. One is the ‘symbol analyst’, a person who can read a pattern of letters and numbers, usually displayed on the computer screen, decipher important information and make projections based on this analysis. The other person is the ‘master of change’, one who acquires new information, solves problems, manages mobile and dispersed groups of people, and adapts easily to changing circumstances.

Today, if we imagine the world of work as made up of different sectors, it becomes easy to see the wide application of different kinds of intelligences. Logical-mathematical intelligence, one of the most prized academically, plays a key role in finance, accounting, and the sciences. Sectors in which communication is key, draw heavily on linguistic intelligences. Musical and other artistic intelligences find a natural home in the entertainment industry. Personal intelligences play a key role in any job, but they are especially crucial in sectors that deal with public interaction. Bodily-kinaesthetic intelligences are prized highly in athletics, arts and crafts. Sectors dealing with navigation, transportation, advertising or graphics require, more than anything else, a high degree of spatial intelligence; sectors that work closely with the environment, plant and animal life, textiles, food preparation and ecology, prize naturalist intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence is key to businesses that deal with counselling, career-guidance, motivation, and self-transformation. Sectors that deal with various aspects of spiritual life and matters of personal and communal identity require, among other things, a significant degree of spiritual intelligence.

However, in reality, a complex of various intelligences is essential to any profession. No one intelligence is enough, even though particular intelligences are of special value to different professions. A productive relationship between multiple sets of intelligences is especially crucial in the higher echelons of business and leadership. Most businesses, Gardner reminds us, have a range of departments in addition to management and leadership positions—marketing, sales, accounting, production, human resources, finance, customer relations, outreach, philanthropy, community outreach. Different combinations of linguistic, personal, logical-mathematical, existential and spiritual intelligences shape success in different positions.

Most importantly, no one intelligence is adequate for any sector of business or professional life, even though particular intelligences might be specifically attuned to the work of different sectors. Even when disciplinary expertise is helpful in specific spheres of professional life, it needs to be supplemented by a complex of other intelligences that can only be nourished by a range of disciplines and co-curricular training.

A dedicated curriculum of general education, followed by disciplinary—ideally, contra-disciplinary—expertise goes a long way in preparing the kind of individual who can harness multiple intelligences relevant to their professional sphere.

The rest will come from the training the job itself offers, which might follow internships that form a part of the educational experience. Even so, it remains important to remember that neither education, with its broad, liberal interdisciplinary thrust, nor training, with its more vocational twist, can be a one-time phase in life. People, especially those in high leadership positions, will return to both from time to time, perhaps in brief modules rather than long-term phases. Experience on the job, after all, is empirical in nature—it must be supplemented by the theoretical which represents larger swathes of experience, reality and history, than can be encountered by any individual or group at any given point of time and place. Neither one is a substitute for the other.

All of this leads to a crucial lesson—that there is no such thing as a single ‘business intelligence’. What holds true of intelligence per se has a pointed relevance for intelligence essential to business and professional life. If there were anything called a ‘business IQ’, which is an implicit assumption in the ‘business school way of thinking’, it would doubtless be a complex of a range of intelligences placed in a rich and productive mutual relationship.

Linguistic, logical and personal intelligences are held in high regard by business schools, and individuals who excel in these domains make prized recruits for corporations. Especially, as the ‘symbol analyst’ grows in professional importance in the 21st century and beyond, the deep significance of the classical intelligences, of the linguistic and logical-mathematical variety, will continue to rise. Symbolic systems hinge primarily on these two intelligences, and on various relationships between them, including new and innovative ones, such as different kinds of computer codes.

Business thinkers have come to identify that the productive association between diverse skills developed by rigorous academic training is central to key professional domains. Lauren A Rivera has carried out a first-hand, ethnographic study of three different kinds of workspace—positions in top-tier investment banks, management consulting firms, and law firms. But are these similar jobs? Or are they simply a comparison between ‘apples, oranges and pears’, as Rivera thinks it might appear to some observers? There is no doubt that the work of investment banks, consulting firms, and law firms is very different from each other. But they also share key features—they all work with a similar body of clients, usually large corporations. The work is intensive, deadline-driven, and involves over sixty-five hours of work per week. They hire personnel in a similar fashion, through on-campus recruiting, where they look out for the brightest and most driven graduates across a range of disciplines.

But the nature of work that defines their operation shows a striking mutual similarity. It involves both analytical and interpersonal skills—a complex of logical-mathematical, linguistic, and personal intelligences—deployed to a combination of research, teamwork and client interaction. Multiple intelligence theory is richly relevant to the character of such work, as is a broad-based, multidisciplinary education that brings to bloom disparate strands of multiple intelligences.

Being an effective corporate professional—most certainly someone in a position of business leadership—involves multiple ways of being in the world, and multiple ways of relating to it.

The multi-dimensional plane of existence applies not merely at the micro-level but on the macro-level as well. It is as true of the corporation as it is of the individuals that make it up. In a 2014 article in Forbes, Steve Denning recalled Peter Drucker’s vision that the crucial job of the future corporation will be to balance its three dimensions—as an economic organisation, a human organisation, and as a social organisation.

The past half-century saw the development of each of these models in different national contexts. The American model, with its focus on shareholder interest, foregrounded the economic one. The German model of the social market economy championed the social one, while the Japanese model, with its emphasis on personal and communal loyalties, embodied the human one.

All these three models have now revealed their weaknesses as well as strengths, and it is clear that none of them is able to make it on its own. The American model of maximising shareholder profit, too, Drucker felt, was a fair-weather model that worked well only during times of prosperity. The German model brought economic success and a stable society, but it did so at the cost of high unemployment and dangerous labour-market rigidity. After twenty years of striking success, the Japanese model appeared to crumble at the first serious challenge and seriously hindered its own recovery from recession.

The corporation is an organism that must be simultaneously human, social, and economic to be sustainable in the long run. No one dimension can rule over the other. How can its leaders, managers and other employees be otherwise? If disciplinary expertise—along with attendant intelligences—must have close links to the goods or services produced by the corporation, its location within the world at large demands an assortment of other intelligences. Such an assortment can only be nourished by a range of disciplines. The worldly success of a corporation and its employees is not simply measurable through quantitative trends in the free market, but through the way they bring together a complex of intelligences, ranging from the mathematical to the personal. It is this complex of intelligences that can stay way ahead of the AI game. The subjective, ethically and environmentally sensitive deployment of this range that bridges the mathematical and the emotional is beyond the range of Artificial Intelligence—yet.

(Views expressed are personal)

Saikat Majumdar is the author of several books, including College: Pathways of Possibility

(This appeared in the print as 'What Is Business IQ?')