Harnessing the Power of Group Intelligence with Siobhan McHale

Your Working Life with Caroline Dowd-Higgins

Siobhan McHale has worked across four continents, helping thousands of leaders to create more agile and productive workplaces. She also has been on the “inside” as the executive in charge of culture change in a series of large, multinational organizations. One of these inside jobs was a radical seven-year change initiative at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) Bank that transformed it from the lowest-performing bank in the country into one of the highest-performing and most admired banks in the world. Professor John Kotter used her work with ANZ as a Harvard Business School case study designed to teach MBA students about managing change. Her book, The Hive Mind at Work: Harnessing the Power of Group Intelligence to Create Meaningful and Lasting Change, will be published on Sept. 3, 2024 from HarperCollins Leadership.

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Growing up on a farm in Finea, a small village in southern Ireland, McHale watched the bees as they swarmed in the orchard of her family’s farm. This fascination with bees led her to investigate the intricacies of human ecosystems and she would go on to spend three decades studying groups in the workplace. This experience taught her about the power of harnessing the Hive Mind and the group intelligence needed to create meaningful and lasting change.

Over the past 30 years, McHale has helped thousands of leaders to create more agile and productive workplaces. Her approach comes – not from the ivory tower – but from her insider role as the executive in charge of transformation in a series of international firms. One of these inside jobs was a radical seven-year change initiative at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) Bank that transformed it from the lowest-performing bank in the country into one of the highest-performing and most admired banks in the world. Professor John Kotter used her work with ANZ as a Harvard Business School case study designed to teach MBA students about managing change.

In The Hive Mind at Work, McHale answers:

• What are some of the lessons we can learn from how bees operate?
• Why is group intelligence (GQ) more effective in bringing about workplace change than the traditional IQ and EQ options?
• What can leaders do when workplace change is too slow?
• What skills are necessary for navigating change in today’s more complex work environment?
• Why do so many workplace change efforts fail to deliver?

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