3.1.1. Talent and competency: specific operating modes

“Because intelligence, as a human skill, is not a fixed skill or some ‘understanding’ stranded in its categories (perhaps the famous Kantian categories), but a capacity that is opened in court, in the worksite, that de-categorizes, re-categorizes and deploys itself all the more as it crosses deviated intelligibilities” [JUL 12, p. 46].

How is this part key for the reader and for the professional? Why not go to the “essentials” by already giving a method enriched with tools right now? As leaders, we have learned that applying “recipes” can make us dependent on those who sell them. Once the “recipe” is used by everyone, everyone knows the “trick” and the effect then fades and dissolves. We have learned that a “recipe” can lead to the “Photoshop syndrome”. Using the same tool and therefore the same options – even varied ones – leads to “identifiable” and predictable results. Moreover, the “recipe” has the disadvantage of not “showing” how it was thought of; it explains (smoothes creases), but it does not explain (make it visible) the underlying process through which the person who proposed it has passed. In simple terms: the ingredients of a soft drink are given, but not the “formula”.

It is the same for “ideas” and “concepts”, when everyone uses the same “models”, we end up generating a “normality” that does not/no longer offers the potential to regrow. The resource is exhausted, since everyone uses it without thinking about it. Thus, we propose this work to offer the foundations of the “formula” from which the professional can “play”, train, experiment and develop competencies related to the development of “talents”.

The sum of human activities mobilizes operating modes. Whether natural and/or developed through imitation, observation, experimentation or reproduction, these modes of operation become effective when they reach the status of “competencies” (intentional behavior) through training. However, it must be kept in mind that in nature, a “competency” seems to unfold from a skill-ability point of view. In the course of our research, we observed five plants for 76 days: Chinese Glycine (Wisteria sinensis), Dandelion (Taraxacum), Great Nettle (Urtica dioica subsp. dioica), Hops (Humulus) and Alder Glutinous (Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaertn). The intention of this observation was to understand how plants – without “brains” – are capable of adapting to situations, deploying and updating themselves. When they have only one stem (and are therefore structurally fixed), how can they move and unfold smoothly and quickly (+22 cm in 24 hours for Hops)? We reviewed the work of several experts, including Francis Hallé and Anthony Trewavas. We have been fascinated (the word is correct) by the discovery of skills-abilities of the plant world. It was at this time that we reinforced our gap with the concept of intelligence, including the “forms of intelligence”.

When a plant expands (leaf extension), the shape (lobes) of the leaves and the organization of the leaves on the stem (phyllotaxia¹) aim to capture as much light as possible, but particularly aim to prevent them from shading themselves (optimal phyllotaxia). “Competency” in a plant is not declarative, it is “organizational”, not from a logical-abstract and sequenced-isolated point of view, but from a usefulproductive point of view. We had a “revelation”, or at least an actualization of thought. Competency could be apprehended on the same basis as a skill-ability, not in terms of “knowledge” (intelligible or cognitive), but in terms of the organization of its skills, with regard to usefulness. This was in line with what we had observed regarding the “Shapes of Intelligence” – what we call MO.O.N. – in situations, they responded systematically to a utility, that is, they aimed to produce a practical result and/or a higher result than the existing one, independent of any activity of the mind (nous).

Competency would not (therefore) be intelligible (declarative) knowledge, but a dynamic and adaptive principle intentionally mobilized: “I operate within my competency when I am able to produce a type of result with an “identified” intention”. Trewavas’ work shows that plants are “adaptive” and have “intentional behavior”; they can modify their morphology and branch line structure to adapt to an environment (potential er configuration). In the case of our observation, the environment was favorable because of a porous soil (positive hydric potential²), which we had seen when the Chinese glycine observed separated from a young stem when it became “useless”, a priori linked to the problem of evapotranspiration. The plant, in some cases, is subject to a “loss of organs” in an unfavorable situation (negative potential) in order, it seems, to redirect water and sap. We were able to hypothesize that there is a closer link between the way a plant evolves and the brain than that between a brain and a computer.

Although they do not have a “brain”, plants learn, memorize and decide [NAR 05, p. 105]. In this way, they can assess the circumstances and communicate, that is, use a (biochemical) “principle” from which a modification can be made. Such a discovery changed the “game”, confirming that “intelligence” – as we knew it – was not the important factor of success, performance or any observable-readable productivity. The important factor is the way in which a natural operating mode (MO.O.N.) organizes itself into competencies and adjusts, deploys and communicates in such a way that it embraces reality positively (in other words, with little or no difference between intention and result). In this way, we were able to consolidate the underlying dynamic principle of competency: an intentional operating mode (I.O.M). These observations found a likeness to Lorentz’s work:

“Any adaptation of an organ or behavior to a certain environmental condition requires that information about that condition be recorded in the organism. However, it can only be registered in two ways: either during phylogenesis by the processes of mutation, recombination of hereditary dispositions or natural selection, or by the individual mechanisms of information acquisition of the organism during its ontogenesis. ‘Innate’ and ‘acquired’ are not defined by exclusion from each other, but according to the origin of the information concerning the outside world, which is the without condition of any adaptation [...] there is every reason to postulate that certain behavioral sequences, especially those that, as ‘innate preceptors’ guiding learning processes in the right direction, cannot be modified by learning” [LOR 09, p. 27].

Our continuous observation correlated another aspect: a plant deploys itself in a processual way, in other words, without an objective (objectum, which stops sight). The competency of the plant is processive, that is, its deployment is not segmented by a “mental act”, “encrypted”, “rational” or “abstract”. One of the probable conclusions that can be confirmed in the company was that an intentional operating mode (competency), when deployed from a natural operating mode, in addition to not being exhausted, produces a positive result of potential, in other words, capable of growing new possibilities. To put it another way, when a person develops his competency from his personal skills, on the one hand, the “famous” Peter’s Syndrome recedes, but, on the other hand, he starts to perform and progress efficiently and according to a principle of propensity.

3.1.2. Intelligence, a useful concept, not a reality

Extending the study and practice, we propose to explain the way and method with which we approach the issue of MO.O.N.s. We will then explain why we avoid using the term “forms of intelligence” [GAR 97] – although the underlying theoretical principle is similar to the one we have been working on since 2005.

We have stated that intelligence and talent are not observable realities, they are words for which concepts have been invented and “proof” sought out in the brain. Thus, in general, the “researcher” tells the “brain” what his frame of reference led him to think (see Ledoux). It will suffice to “see” how the brain is “divided” into large regions (parietal/occipital/temporal/frontal) in order to remind us of the Greek model relating to the leaking point and consequently to perspective. Let us remember that perspective is part of both a “frame” called the landscape (circumscribed to divisible, 1539), and the observer’s “point of view”. Thus, as soon as we cut out the brain, just as we cut out the “landscape” organized in the “frame”, we can only think of reality from the frame and no longer from reality itself. Now, let us suppose that the frame shows mountains and not the sea; the sea can never be “thought” of as existing, but at best as a hypothesis, or negated. The problem with such a cultural model is dividing the brain as one divides the landscape or competency: in a rational manner and in identified and explained segments. On this subject, we share an inspiring comment that Alain Berthoz offered us when he spoke of the caution that we should cultivate when we want to “do” something to the “brain”: we can perhaps “say” what we “see”, but we know nothing about everything we do not see.

Chinese thought, on the other hand, has thought of the landscape (initiated by Guo Xi, a landscape master and great scholar of the North Song) on the basis of three distances (san yuan): the distant plan (pingyuan), the deep distance (shenyuan) and the high distance (gaoyuan). What is important – the reference point – is not the observer’s “point of view”, but the “place” from which the observer’s observation stems: plan, deep and high. The works of Alain Berthoz, John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser tend to show that neurons are activated depending on where the person is. This could support one of our hypotheses: the brain would not be a fixed structure organized in “spaces” defined, but a “system” that is adaptive to configurations (distant) and potentials (strengths and availabilities), which it “molds” in such a way that it adapts to them “coherently”. It would not (therefore) be like a computer, as mentioned above, but similar to a tree tapping on both earth and air, the useful and necessary “components” for its propensity.

The observation and evaluation of (approximately) 2,000 people, including about 1,000 professionals (managers, executives, sportsmen and sportswomen, psychologists, coaches, marketers, administrative directors, entrepreneurs, health care personnel), show that a MO.O.N. is attracted by a “utility”, molds potential and is actualized in a configuration. If the person is not in the right configuration, then it is advisable to emulate (experimental) reality of it: thus, the empathic skills (observing, for example, the micro-expressions of a face) can be evaluated as much in a natural situation, as in a room that is 4 m² big. We observed that people deploying an empathic operating mode adopted the emotional expressions represented on photographs of faces showing different forms of emotions; whereas a person deploying a naturalistic MO.O.N. would “organize” their face before suggesting emotion. The description is processual, from top to bottom, detail by detail. The interest is real – it is a concentrated gaze and the gesture is precise when he/she shows a particular aspect of emotion. On the other hand, a person deploying a linguistic/mathematical MO.O.N. describes or shows little emotion on their face, but use images (metaphors/analogies) or hijacked terms to name what he/she “sees”: for example, the photo showing sadness is translated as “bland”, anger as “a lion”, contempt as “drooping mouth”, etc. She looks at faces with “coldness”, in other words, without expressions or attitude showing one form of (slight) harmonization to the other. The person is not “touched” by what they observe. It translates emotions into concepts and/or symbolic interpretations that are primarily intelligible and rational.

In 2011, we tested a group of top managers with the ability to explain and emulate. This was to lead them to understand the real skills of their collaborators and not the “CV qualities”. We asked for one or more volunteers with whom the group would train. Then, we asked our question.

During a training session to test the skills of explanation and emulation with 25 top managers, and after asking a volunteer, we asked the following question: “What can you do in a natural and spontaneous way, for which you have not received any formal training, and which leads you to a satisfactory or optimal result? Don’t neglect any aspect of your personal, professional world”. One of the people raised his hand and said, “I can skip”. The group had to question him so that his natural and intentional modes of operation could be understood and observed. Instead, the following questions were asked: “Where do you skip? How long have you been doing it? How big is your boat?” Etc.. In less than 6 minutes, the group exhausted its resource of classical questions, and then criticized the low efficiency of our method. Without answering anything, we asked the group to leave their chairs. Then we asked the skipper to reproduce the shape and size of his boat with them in the room. It only took him 3 minutes to reproduce the shape of this last one. Then we asked him to sit in it, which he did by sitting on one of the chairs. We asked him whether that is how he sits. He replied no. We asked him to take the exact position “in” the boat. He then sat down on the floor with his legs almost parallel to the ground, his bust at 45 degrees from the ground, his right hand holding an “object” and his gaze rising rapidly towards the ceiling. “What are you looking at?”, we asked; “I look at the noise”, he answered, to which we reiterated “look at the noise?!”; “What does the noise look like?”. At that moment, the person stood up straight and said to us, by joining his hands together, “yes, the sound of the sail, like so” and he tapped his hands in an irregular and rapid manner. The public was overwhelmed by the access to this type of information that “classic” questions could not emulate. Indeed, no issue of an explanatory nature allows access to an observable reality in a person. To anchor the experience, we asked the whole group to reproduce the “sound” so that they would consolidate the memory. Even today, we can reproduce the rhythm with our hands.

3.2.1. Similarities between ling and metis

“Zigong: why is it that Kong Wenzi received this posthumous name from wen (the accomplished man)?

The Master: he was a man with a lively mind and so in love with knowledge that he was not afraid to learn even from his subordinates; he was therefore called wen” Confucius, Book V, Men, 14.

As a civilizational writing involving the concept of intelligence, wen seems to have actualized itself from a careful observation of reality. Cang Ji, the seer-script (inventor of Chinese characters), represented by two pairs of eyes, observed both stars and bird tracks on the ground. This representation shows the importance of observing reality and its course (its deployment) in Chinese thought. Thus, Wen refers to both the qualities of a person, and also to the way in which “they” present a problem, not from the point of view of the (nous) mind, but of observation: “In the matter of knowledge, it is not the quantity that matters, but the process of carefully examining what we know”, says Xunzi. The notion of examination is not to be taken from the logical analysis (logismos) point of view, which may imply induction or deduction, but of appreciation-assessment (ji, wei).

The proximity of the wen sign to the yao sign thus refers to the marks, the streaks, or the zebra marks that can be observed on the fur of animals, such as the tiger (wen yin), the zebra (wen ma) or the pheasant (wen han). In this continuity, there is an etymological agreement (graphical analogy) between wen, jiao (“teach”) and xue (“imitate”/“teach”). Hence, perhaps the teachings of the various Chinese arts (painting, calligraphy, martial arts, etc.) are not taught by explanation (logical and intelligible), but by figuration (show-reproduce). Let us emphasize, as a possible conclusion to this short development of wen, the expression shuo wen (說文); associated with the character 說 (shuo), wen (文) expresses a fine, light rain, which falls drop by drop, but also the good, the benevolent. It is (therefore) not a moral and ethical “good”, but a discreet “good” operating by continuous permeation. “Good” can then be understood as an efficient principle.

Following on from wen, let us investigate another notion related to the issue of “intelligence” in China: ling (靈) Ling designates not only notions such as fast, sharp, intelligent, efficient, effective, ingenious, clever and resourceful, but also the idea of driving people, navigating on waters, understanding and grasping what situations imply (ling 領). This notion seems to find a similarity with the Greek metis, in other words, the method of operating relative to (polytropic) situations. It is not a (cognitive) mind capable of thinking – according to philosophical standard – from logos or mathesis, but a situation-configuration (dromos, where it happens). Let us put these two notions into a table, in order to first understand their operational similarity, and then explain them in two examples of managers. This will be useful later on in the development of a “performance” sheet, for example.

The first table proposes to approach the operating similarity between ling (靈) and metis, in particular in what forms of the skills⁴ involving the “situational” it implies. The second painting apprehends ling (領) and metis in their “operating” dimension, that is, the way in which people are led, a ship in a process, in other words, in a configurative flow (moment-position; shi wei). There is leadership only because there is a configuration that encourages “putting it into practice”, just as there is strategy only because there is potential in coherence with an expected result.

If the team in charge of developing the “talents” of the company’s audiences wishes to succeed in this “development”, it will de facto have to integrate the situational-temporal-utility factor as a necessary aspect for the evaluation and development of the latter. We see many “definitions” of the ideal manager in organizations. These approximate definitions attempt to “name” what the mind “sees” (more or less “well”, by a sum of fantasized concepts), but what the gaze can no longer observe.

3.2.2. Wuwei: lingering in the wind

To illustrate what might seem abstract, let us take the example of a Chinese entrepreneur we met in Shanghai during our work in October 2014. We asked him how he does it when he operates as a strategist. To that, among the answers, one of them was evocative of Chinese thought; and yet, the said answer may seem benign, almost “irrelevant”. We chose it because it makes the implicit meaning of Chinese “intelligence” visible:

“[…] It’s like wuwei means what, I’m not going to do anything, it’s just not doing nothing, in fact, it’s trying to linger in the wind [...]”⁵.

For a Westerner, this phrase might not mean anything, whereas from a Chinese point of view, the foundations of culture are found there and set implicit evidence. First, the notion of wuwei (non-action, 無為), which refers to the principle of doing nothing, but in such a way that nothing is not done (wuwei er wu bu wei). This founding notion, in addition to the implication of a “process” principle operating away from a direct and continuous (rational and measurable) action, shows that there is no point in “getting angry” about wanting to control everything, the essential thing being to remain available to the potential (shi/che), in other words, to the support endowed with effect that is fitting to mold. Therefore, ling wu (領悟) implies this ability to perceive what might emerge in the (now available) current trial. Where is the trend going to come from, not “rise” (by surprise and consequently necessary to “monitor”, kairos), but initiate in order to actualize itself (become active)? It is therefore not necessary to “seize” the opportunity (the opportunity being already “too late”, since others can also “seize” it), but to be perceptive, penetrated by the attention paid to the indescribable operator (ling xiu, 靈修). Hence, the Chinese leader points out that wuwei is necessary upstream of the “wind”. It is this particular skill that bestows the “high intelligence” status of a leader, he tells us⁶. “Lingering in the wind” thus requires a “high intelligence”...

The wind (feng) finds its source in wen (文), as much in the manner as a prince directs his people, as in the way a strategist molds the trend. In both cases, it operates in such a way that the actualization is to his advantage: “The wind rises and the herbs tilt. The wind blows and all the earth’s cavities let us hear an infinite multitude of sounds. It is up to the Wind to gently animate the realities of the Natural World” [JUL 03, p. 91].

Wind refers to the capacity for influence, animation and orientation. Whoever knows how to apprehend the wind – linger on it – can anticipate the future result, and consequently direct and lead people (ling ren, 領人). In strategy, wind involves the support endowed with effect (che), which it is advisable to detect latently, itself upstream of the primer itself, where nothing seems to be perceptible. Is not that what the ship’s pilot, the skipper, the river pilot (ling jiang, 領江) does by being alert, sharp, skillful and nimble (ling bian, 靈便)? Thus, lingering on the wind implies the ability to apprehend this time that moves, which is necessary to embrace in order to adapt to it and to draw what is “positive” from it (which does not deviate from the course of events). Is this not, in this case, what Gabrielle Chanel perhaps embraces, to whom we attribute this sentence: “fashion doesn’t exist only in dresses, fashion is in the air, it’s the wind that brings it, we feel it, we breathe it, it’s in heaven on the macadam, it’s based on ideas, on morals, on events” [MEY 13, p. 169]? Ms. Chanel deploys a sharp observation (eustochia), as well as a scrutinizing attention to environmental signals. Thus, at the beginning of the 20th Century, the specific period in which women were under the dictatorship of a fashion that made them heavier, invading them with tight, complicated and useless fabrics, Gabrielle Chanel took the bias and disorientated the ordinary logic (thaumasiōtaton). She, who is known for her ruthless observation (stochazesthai), perceives the “trend”, whose coherence and tendency she detects. She would do as much with the “twinset”⁷ (skirt with a pullover and cardigan) as the perfume (no. 5). Her wise prudence (phronesis) correlated with her sense of observation, giving her a specific sense of “movement”: where the wind blows, the grass tilts, the Chinese adage tells us. Where Chanel “breathes”, fashion leans, not because Gabrielle Chanel is “awesome” – from the classical Western point of view – but because Miss Chanel does not deviate from the trend and because she perceived in this moment-position (the beginning of the century) the potential and the support endowed with effect on which to lean. She embraced it, and when she did, fate smiled at her. “I was Destiny’s tool for a necessary cleansing operation”⁸, it seems to us, incarnates both this form of “Chinese intelligence” (ling wu, 領悟) that allows us to understand and grasp, just as much as perceive the current reality, and this ancient form of “Greek intelligence” of metis. Indeed, her ability to recognize a sign in space, a landmark (tékmōr) from which she unfolds her “talent” through her capacity-ability to conjecture, guess and form an accurate idea from the broadest perspectives (eikázein) seems to be one of the master skills of one whose “breath” has tilted so many herbs.

The intellectual study (logos) has neither role nor interest in this form of (situational-trending) analysis, because it is not abstract thought that prevails, but the index (external to the mind) inherent in reality. Lingering on the wind does (thus) not imply any rational measure that statistics could “fix” in the mind, but mobilizes an assessment skill (ji), in other words an ability (ling, 領) able to correlate a sum of signals at the latent stage, then adopt the “right” attitude, not in terms of “moral”, but in terms of orientation (ling xing 靈醒). This is what the Chinese idea of “intelligence” in the sense of “reflection”, “sharpness” and “evidence” could refer to; this perceptual aptitude for a process that must be carefully observed, and not seen (idein) by the ideas and knowledge (epistêmé) that one possesses through formal “high-level” learning.

Let us take another example, a French one. However, let us take a classical one that the company does not know how to “assess” or “observe” (and therefore name). This is the assessment of a sales manager conducted in 2012. The latter had shown a “rare” combination of skills related to the metis (see extra-personnel MO.O.N.). This “rarity” created a serious problem for the company, as he had to leave the company for retirement a few months later. Neither he nor the HR team was able to implement a succession plan that involved an effective transfer of skills. The reason was “simple”, the semantic-practical reference used was out of touch with reality. They were looking for “soft skills/say/do”, where there was in fact an operator (without knowing), in other words, a sum of operating procedures always linked to a situation. For example, this manager never realized that he:

• – placed himself in a specific spot when prospects entered his store. This position gave him the opportunity to grasp the walking speed, the directional tendency (in other words, where the prospect goes in a spontaneous or tentative manner). This place offered him a global view of the store, from which he was able to assess, for example, the time a person was going to spend in a department just by correlation with the journey he had made before (dokeúein, spy on all the detours, on the lookout, ready to act). This assessment gave him the ability to guess and formulate the most accurate ideas about the broadest perspectives (eikázein) of the prospect’s buying potential. In terms of the metis, he was a (damn) “good lookout” (eúskopos), a notion found on the Chinese side through the expression ling huo ji dong (靈活機動);
• – deciphered the way people walked, talked to each other (without hearing them) and positioned themselves. Thus, he was able to imitate (polutrophos) the “style” of people with subtlety and finesse (paipálēma), and deploy the appropriate ruse to lead the prospect to become a customer;
• – observed and memorized numerous situational and temporal data: time of observation, way of looking at a product, interaction with the accompanying person and/or the seller, way of comparing two products, use of space, use of a smartphone to compare products, etc.;
• – developed a specific way of approaching the (biased) prospects, so that they did not see him arrive, without creating surprise (drómos, prepared his course by going to observe the configuration of the terrain in detail) and thus “frighten” or annoy.

None of these operating modes were part of the company’s semantics, and every effort to train salespeople ended in failure, simply because he had said “something else”, other than what he was practicing. And what he said was not what could be observed: such a (unconscious) gap could only lead to confusion and a trampling of the company.

To put it another way, everyone – him included – wanted to say “something” about his practice in “classical concepts”, when in fact he practiced an operating mode whose language was simply unknown to the company. His practice could not pass through the classical semantic reference for two reasons: first, because the said reference of competencies does not include any word, nor any notion (even conceptual) that is in coherence with the operating mode of this “cunning man” (polutropos). Second, because what cannot be named is not “recognizable”. Although available and observable, it is still “unknown” and therefore unavailable to the company. This specific form of “intelligence” is not apprehended by any reference to our knowledge, quite simply because our people began by losing vocabulary, and then, in time, also losing the ability to observe this type of skill in a situation (hence the current impossibility to articulate this type of “intelligence”).

NOTE.– Intelligence is far from being “obvious”, since we submit it to the face of a culture whose history offers a similarity in scientific, cultural, artistic and political progress and “abundance”. We draw attention to the fact that the concept of “talent development”, when it outlines the claim of a form of universality, is (rapidly) put to the test by cultures whose historical density has nothing to envy ours. “Talent” and “intelligence” cannot be thought of – as we have mentioned previously – in terms of the reality that “possesses” a person, but as “skills-abilities” inherent in situations and results. Talent and intelligence are therefore only worth it because there is a situation, a configuration and a utility inherent in potential.