From IQ to EQ to AQ - one quotient to rule them all
For the best part of a century the prevailing theory was to hire the smartest person in the room.
Straight up mental horsepower - verbal, spatial, mathematical.
And we determined that honorific via a number - IQ.
And for a time that worked reasonably well.
Until it didn’t.
Whilst there existed a bevy of literature supporting a moderate correlation between IQ and education, job performance and income there was also a rising tide highlighting potential flaws.
What about critical skills such as empathy, social interaction, motivation, personality and creativity? The question of cultural bias, issues of standardization and whether it actually was a strong predictor of success.
We had analysis, meta-analysis and even a few meta-analysis of meta-analysis. I kid you not.
In the end the general consensus was that IQ provided a reliable predictor of academic and job performance.
Good for certain tasks. Not for others.
Tasks like people.
When it came to leadership, motivation, teamwork and conflict – IQ was losing ground as a hallmark of a successful candidate.
Time to add a layer the stack - EQ
Now we were addressing issues of empathy, emotional awareness and the capacity to leverage our understanding and emotional knowledge of those around us. (leverage in a supportive and positive sense, not a Machiavellian one)
But where as IQ results could be confounded by something as simple as tiredness, mood or anxiety - so too did EQ come with complexity.
How exactly do you quantify and comparatively standardise scores dealing with something as ephemeral as emotions and sensitivity?
On the flipside we did gain a set of ‘soft skills’ that were not necessarily embedded and determined by our DNA.
Your IQ might be fairly well set in stone whereas EQ is a skillset that we could potentially teach, develop and comprehend.
And for decades this combination of IQ and EQ worked reasonably well.
Until it didn’t.
As the sheer volume and speed of information and the pervasiveness of ‘work’ gathered escape velocity from the cubicles we found that IQ and EQ did not provide a bulwark against long term burnout and fatigue.
IQ may have been a solid predictor of specific job performance and EQ equally at predicting short to medium term career performance, but when it came to long term performance - across all spectrums of your life - there was a significant gap.
Is it time for an apex quotient to rule them all?
Cue the dramatic music and quick cutaway camera angles.
Here’s my current working thesis on why an Antifragility Quotient (AQ) may be the next evolution.
If the term ‘antifragility’ is new to you - check out Nassim Talebs work or just ask your chosen ‘AI’ web crawling assistant for a summary.
Short version - antifragile people/organisations thrive in both predictable and unpredictable environments. The longer they play the game - be they ‘kind or wicked’ games as David Epstein coined them - they thrive. Uncertainty, volatility, randomness, complexity - they thrive.
Not survive, thrive.
What does that look like as a skill set?
There is a growing wordcount emanating from the halls of academia regarding this but I’d prefer to look at it from a tangible real world skill set.
What does it look like at the coalface?
For me, a high AQ would manifest itself in the following capacities/heuristics:
Simplicity over complexity.
Discipline over motivation
Always be building redundancy
Have skin in the game
Tinker but don’t blow up your house
Prioritise options over plans
Don’t win arguments, just win
People with a high AQ (no there is no universally accepted test as yet that I’m aware of, I’ll get to that) - are highly adaptable to change, embrace uncertainty, iterate via small risks/failures and have a growing tolerance for time under tension.
These are skills that are teachable across all boundaries.
They serve across task, career and life.
These are the people that structure their behaviour and emotions around holding an asymmetrical higher ground, ensuring that whatever direction the needle moves, they are capable of garnering the upside.
How do we measure and set a score for AQ?
There are only two tests that I can find that have undergone some measure of peer review and rigor; the AQ-I and AQ-S - but they measure a mix of similar and different aspects. If we cannot agree on the traits and components to measure it might get tricky to set a comparable score across the field.
So HR can’t stamp your AQ score on your resume yet.
In the meantime - the greatest return still lies in understanding what the behaviours look like - fostering those skills, developing the mental models and organisational heuristics that push the needle towards antifragility.
Perhaps that is the very point.
The truly antifragile don’t want or need a score.
They simply are.