Does intelligence matter?

11:00 PM last night, I was sitting on our terrace with a consultant from Accenture, having a drink and chatting, looking over the lights of the city. He told me that by nature, he was a theoretician and enjoyed an intellectual challenge, but his work has taught him that execution is the key. Our conversation turned to, why so many wonderful ideas never translate into singificant contributions to the real world. In short, what is the difference between imagining an elegant solution to a complex (business) problem and actually making it happen?

Intelligence is quite different from Knowledge. While knowledge represents the facts and skills that we have learnt, Intelligence claims to be a measure of our ABILITY to process information. Early theorists maintained that intelligence was the true measure of how well a person can learn and was largely inborn, hand hence could not be changed through training, etc. The dark days of intelligence testing was when it was used as a method for deciding that certain ethnic groups were better than others.

This is how the theory of intelligence works: Among various things we do, there are those that require us to understand shapes and patterns, other tasks require numerical ability, still others require verbal or language skills. Is there a correlation among these? If a person is good at some things, will that reflect in other tasks too? Hence was born the idea of a G factor, or a General Factor as a measure of some abstract "mental capacity". There are others who maintained that such a generalization is not possible and that there are indeed Multiple Intelligences, that help us achieve different things.

Measuring a single score, has all the problems of an AGGREGATE score in any examination. While a single composite or aggregate score makes it easier to make decisions, it gives us very little about the relative strengths and weaknesses of any particular candidate.

Much of this is passe, since Daniel Goleman, challenged the prevailing theory of a single intelligence by pointing out that this was not the only possible view. Since the publication of Emotional Quotient, there is talk about Spiritual Quotient, Relationship Quotient, etc.

All such tests are paper and pencil tests and measure the skill by giving the person, simulated situations and asking for responses. How well do these measures stand up in the real world? Most research suggests, that the correspondence between intelligence and performance in the real world is at best moderate. Goleman suggests adding Emotional Intelligence as another factor can help to improve the correlation between IQ and real world performance.

Around 2 am we finally came to the conclusion that there are indeed multiple intelligences. One could be the design intelligence, but it also needed relationship skills, emotional skills and something called BODY INTELLIGENCE. Body intelligence is the knowledge in our muscles, that cannot be put into words. The feel of the grain of wood or marble a sculptor needs to understand to work with it. I mentioned a friend of mine, a typist, whenever someone asked him for the spelling of a word, you could see his hands moving on an imaginary keyboard. The spelling was not in his head, but litterally on his finger tips. My son has developed a strong interest in Aero Engineering, but I tell him that he has to work with engines first hand, get the feel of how an Internal Combustion Engine works, get a feel for metals and meterials, know how they can be shaped. Imagining solutions is one thing, creating a workable prototype is another. Another friend of mine, an IIT Graduate, claims to have developed a working prototype for a revolutionary IC Engine, with much better energy conversion rates. His prototype remains on his work shelf, because he cannot trust anyone to take the invention to the next level, register patents, etc.

But then again, perhaps all this is not inborn or fixed. Perhaps there is a scope for improvement. Working with children with learning disability shows us how easier it is to help a child learn in the way that is most effective for that child. A small change in the way a child learns can make a big difference on his or her school scores. For example if a child cannot understand words by looking at them, encourage the child to read out loud and to learn from the spoken word rather than the written word.

The Talk Shop is devoted to helping people (both individuals and organizations) understand the relationship between knowledge, emotions, relationships and body intelligence. Then again, everything seems so much clearer at 2 am, sitting on the terrace with a friend, sipping a drink, watching the city lights, and discussing how ACCENTURE captures knowledge from new projects and solutions and makes it available to Accenture world wide. I wish it was as easy to build Talk Shop based on these thoughts. Then again, design intelligence is not enough... now where have I heard that before?