What is "natural intelligence"?

Communication skills, stress tolerance, honesty, and natural intelligence. All of these are skills that are often discussed during recruitment. Among them, it seems that "natural intelligence" is often required as a base skill regardless of the type of job.

When people talk about "natural intelligence," most of them are trying to evaluate it on a different scale than academic achievement or academic background, but I think that the interpretation of "natural intelligence" varies from person to person. If it is discussed as one of the hiring criteria within a company without being clearly defined or verbalized, small discrepancies can become big.

This time, we interviewed seven people from XICA's management team, founders, and human resources department to discuss what "good natural intelligence" means.

What is natural intelligence?

── What do you think exactly means "good natural intelligence"?

CTO Korezawa　I think that natural intelligence is the "power to survive." People with the "power to survive" will use all the assets in their organization, including the power of others, to produce results and achieve their goals, and carry out their execution to the end. To achieve this, the ability to receive feedback, look at oneself objectively and reflect on one's results, transfer duties and roles to more talented people, and ask for advice from others, even if they are rivals, to help them achieve their own results and grow, are characteristics of a "naturally intelligent" person. Another characteristic of a naturally intelligent person is the ability to come up with ideas that solve multiple problems with one idea.

CFO Sugiyama　In a narrow sense, it is the ability to derive an answer that others have not thought of from the same input. In a broader sense, it also includes the ability to organize input and critical thinking to evaluate one's own output.

DevHR Watanabe　I think people who can grasp things structurally and pinpoint the weak points are naturally intelligent. They are the embodiment of the sayings "listen to one thing, know ten" and "get to the point."

CTO Korezawa　It's not about guts, but about making assumptions based on data and facts, creating mechanisms, and then operating and improving them. The ability to structure and simplify things also seems to apply.

-- So one of the key points is "being able to grasp things structurally."

CEO Hirao　Furthermore, it would be good to be able to structure unstructured discussions or events using your own rules, a so-called hypothesis design.

Controlling the level of abstraction is important in order to respond with evidence no matter what topic is presented. By correctly grasping the level of abstraction of the discussion and controlling its level, the discussion can be made more concrete, leading to the best answer.

HR Nakazawa　I also think that reproducibility is important. If you structure successful experiences, they should become reproducible, so it would be good if they could be used in a general purpose way.
I think the speed at which all of this is processed is also a sign of good intelligence.

CEO Hirao　Speed ​​is certainly important. I think people who can instantly structure and identify the essence of a problem are geniuses.

An innovator is someone who can come up with a third proposal based on this idea. Economist Joseph Schumpeter used the analogy that "no matter how many mail coaches you connect together, it will never become a railroad," and said, "Innovation is not about thinking along the lines of an extension of the past, but about bringing about discontinuous innovation with new ideas."

When asked, "I want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, so I want to make the horse faster. How can we do this?", a scientist is someone who can identify the essential issue as "getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible" and come up with the answer, "Instead of making a horse faster, we should make a car."

-- So it's important to understand the structure and then be able to come up with an essential answer.

DevHR Watanabe　The ability to verbalize is also important in order to communicate abstract phenomena and thoughts. Even if you're good at it, I think you need to be naturally smart.

Co-Founder Kunimatsu　I think natural intelligence also comes with a large vocabulary. In other words, it's the ability to correctly name abstract ideas.

Thinking is the accumulation of the task of naming abstract ideas, and the accuracy of each naming affects the quality of thinking. The accuracy of naming depends on the depth of understanding and sensitivity of the words used, so I think that a good natural intelligence can be expressed in one word as a large vocabulary.

COO Yano　I believe that a good balance between creative thinking and logical thinking is what makes someone naturally intelligent. For example, I think someone who has a unique goal and can logically explain the path to get there is naturally intelligent. On the other hand, even if someone is good at constructing logic, I don't find them very attractive if they can't visualize their ideals or goals or don't have their own ideas.

Can the natural mind be trained?

-- The ability to quickly structure things and optimally verbalize the unique answers you arrive at is a natural intelligence. Is this ability something you're born with? We asked him about "how to train your natural intelligence" and how to acquire it later in life.

DevHR Watanabe　I believe that the skill of grasping structure can be trained by providing an opportunity for output. The flexibility of the mind and the uniqueness that Mr. Yano mentioned may require separate training.

CFO Sugiyama　I believe that information processing ability and critical thinking can be developed by understanding the basic principles of thinking.

What kind of training is specifically effective?

CEO Hirao　I'd like to introduce some specific training methods that I have tried and found to be effective. First of all, it's a good idea to read good books on logical thinking as a foundation.

In terms of input, reading long texts and English texts, and reading difficult literary criticism books was good training. Even if it's not a book, I think reading a lot of high-level materials and trying to understand the intention and ingenuity of the organization will help train your natural intelligence.

In terms of output, in order of training efficiency (※1), good practice would be to practice writing essays for university entrance exams, summarizing the contents of books you have read, creating proposals or presentation materials, and writing long texts that others can read.

All of these things need to be done regularly and continuously. The premise of training is that you receive feedback on your output.

*1: The benefits are great, and the costs, including for others, are low

Co-Founder Kunimatsu　I think it's good to increase your exposure to quality writing. Personally, I recommend literary works over business books.

DevHR Watanabe　I think it's also effective to get into the habit of illustrating and organizing information in a structured way. Also, I think it's important to have the opportunity to express your opinion in any situation, so as a manager, I want to provide many such opportunities to my members.

HR Nakazawa　Speaking of habits, I try to make it a habit to set goals after identifying the elements necessary to succeed in the task at hand. When deciding on an action, I would also like to make it a habit to think about whether there is anything I can use from my past experiences.

── So it's important to repeat input and output.

CTO Korezawa　It depends on the person's type and strengths, but if you want to grow independently, it's best to prioritize acquiring knowledge. The most efficient way to do this is to read books. It's also important to put what you've learned into practice. "Survival skills" are difficult to acquire unless you make a serious effort to change your habits. In order to awaken "survival skills," I think it's important to set something you absolutely want to achieve as a goal that's close to your desires, and make yourself serious about it.

COO Yano　 I think that what's needed to hone your natural intelligence is Shuhari. Imitate the thought process of someone you think is better than you and build your own style.

Surprisingly, it may also be a good idea to value your intuition. It may be a good practice to think about whether you can use logic to go from the intuitive idea of ​​"I want to try/should do it" to "I can do it."

CFO Sugiyama　Creativity can be enhanced by increasing input and output and broadening thought patterns. If we want to develop this skill as a company, I think it is important to create opportunities for even junior members to speak up and present in large forums.

It's also important to create a culture of support across the company so that people can speak up and take on challenges without the fear of making mistakes.

Natural intelligence may be the ability to correctly grasp the breadth and depth of things, and to freely control that breadth and depth in order to derive essential answers.

When I asked the management members how to improve their natural intelligence, they suggested a number of training methods that the members could start working on the next day. I thought that their attitude of valuing habits and supporting people who take on challenges was very typical of XICA.

If you think about and discuss the vague words you use without thinking, you may be able to see the values ​​that your company or team holds dear.

*The affiliation and title of the interviewee are those at the time of the interview.