CONCEPT
Team as Unit of Intelligence
The Follettian thesis that the fundamental unit of organizational intelligence is the team, not the individual — a recognition whose urgency intensifies as AI-augmented individuals appear more capable than the teams they are replacing.
The culminating organizational claim of
Follett's framework — that the fundamental unit of organizational intelligence is the team rather than the individual. Individual intelligence is real, measurable, and bounded. Every mind operates within a specific set of assumptions, experiences a specific angle of vision, possesses a specific range of knowledge. Team intelligence is categorically different — not the sum of individual intelligences but a product of interactions
between them. Circular responses, constructive conflicts, integrative processes through which diverse perspectives combine into readings more complete than any individual could produce. The practical test: take a complex decision and present it first to a single AI-augmented individual, then to a team of five similarly equipped. The team's decision will be more nuanced, more comprehensive, more anticipatory — not because members are smarter but because interactions generate intelligence no individual can produce alone.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The economic argument for replacing teams with