WORLD INTELLIGENCE
The awareness of the larger systems that shape our lives
Many people act as if nothing is going on around them. They reason within the limits of their own culture, their social circle, their profession or their country, while the world around them is undergoing not a change, but a shift.
Having World Intelligence means having the awareness of the context you live in including, historical, social, cultural and civilisational, and of where that context is heading.
“World Intelligence asks where humanity stands on the map of civilisation, where it has come from and where it is going. It also means being able to reason about these questions, and to articulate them, with the concepts and language they require.”
Why World Intelligence matters today.
We have always been interconnected. Today, because of technology, the connections are faster, vaster and more impactful than ever. Whatever happens far away reaches your doorstep, whether or not you take an interest in it.
The contexts we live in have changed in three ways:
They have multiplied. A changing climate, finite resources, machines that may do much of our work, even the extension of life itself: ten years ago, no one could have imagined these as everyday contexts.
They are interconnected. A shift in one quickly moves the others.
They have grown bigger than our imagination. Not everything that is coming can be imagined, because we lack the faculties to imagine it.
Yet most of us do not see these connections. They are not yet part of our everyday discourse, and our imagination fails. We do not have to imagine the consequences, though: the COVID period showed us how someone else’s problem arrives at our door.
Three dimensions of World Intelligence
The civilisational context
Understanding the major shifts under way: exponential technological change, a changing climate, and resources that are not infinite.
A 35-year-old surgeon who has invested years in her career needs to know where AI is taking medicine.
When I bought land to build a family home, an ecologist asked me whether I was building for today’s world or for the future. Places that have never known landslides, drought or heavy snow may know them within ten years.
That is how aware you should be when you are “building” anything for tomorrow.
The smaller worlds we inhabit
World Intelligence is not only civilisational. It also concerns the systems we take part in every day: our organisations, educational institutions, cultural contexts, and the groups, large and small, that we belong to.
Each has its own unwritten rules. I have seen people fail in their careers not because they lacked professionalism, but because they had no understanding of how organisations work, or of how office politics works.
The same is true of friendships and peer groups.
Where you stand in the shift
Every time you start a new job, you learn its context. The faster you understand it, and adapt, the more successful you are. Everyone is capable of this; we already do it.
What has changed is the pace, and contexts are no longer stable systems. The future can literally arrive tomorrow.
So ask yourself, of every shift you see: How much is this part of my life today? How might it affect me in ten years, or sooner?
Not everything that is coming can be imagined, but up to the limits of our imagination, we can prepare.
Signs that World Intelligence is underdeveloped
You fail, and do not know why. You may be brilliant at your job, yet every institution feels like a jungle in which you are struggling to survive, and you keep asking why everyone treats you this way.
You act as if nothing is going on around you. Your reasoning stops at the edge of your own circle: your culture, your class, your profession, your country.
You do not see the connections between what happens far away and what arrives at your door.
You make yourself blind to the shift, under the illusion that you are relatively fine. But it is already happening, and when tomorrow arrives, it brings many surprises.
You plan for today’s world, whether you are choosing a career, a university for your child or a place to build a home.
Many things change when you develop World Intelligence.
You gain the wisdom of existing in today’s reality.
World Intelligence and wisdom go hand in hand.
You understand the unwritten rules.
Institutions stop feeling like a jungle, and you make better strategic decisions: whether to treat a competitor as an enemy, for instance, or to see that the market is big enough to cooperate.
You stop being naive about the patterns,
and about the way things are evolving.
You save energy for your own flourishing.
Not understanding your context takes a great deal of energy and thought, and creates problems and conflicts that leave you little time for what matters to you.
You are prepared.
You make decisions for the world as it will be, not only as it is, so that when tomorrow arrives, it does not take you by surprise.
World Intelligence for leaders and organisations
Many companies are planning their strategies for the next ten years without considering the technological, environmental and social shifts we are living through.
I have rarely met AI visionaries in big companies. Those that do this homework today will be better off tomorrow; those that do not will lose a great deal.
Every significant decision should involve someone, an AI expert or a futurist, who brings that future into the room. On a larger level, it starts with education: our schools, our media and our institutions should be informed by this awareness.
How we work together:
The people who come to me are discontented with the way they are. They have a nagging feeling that there is some truth they should be finding, though they may not yet be able to pinpoint it. That suspicion is where we begin.