Owning Your Own Knowledge
One of the guiding principles of Idea Champions is that any large enough group of people who work in any organization already has the requisite knowledge to deal with the majority of the issues and challenges facing them. There may be issues where they need additional information from outside experts but, in general, they know their business, industry, and market and what they have to do to grow their bottom line.
Why they can't easily access this knowledge on a regular basis and act upon it is another story, however, and why, I imagine, we are in the business we're in.
The issue of not being able to act on the knowledge one already has does not exist because of organizations, of course. It exists because this phenomenon is a major issue for many human beings, and has been, it seems, for as long as there have been human beings. I have a psychologist friend who once confided that when he came across a patient who embraced this syndrome, he recommended other therapists to them as quickly as possible because he found their denial of their own knowledge, and subsequent lack of corrective action, totally exasperating.
Books have been written about the phenomenon of the tragic characters of Shakespeare "disowning knowledge" leading directly to their inevitable demise. Hamlet knows what he needs to know in order to act very early on in that play, but does not, requiring ever greater "burdens of proof" which delay action until it is too late. King Lear knows that he will create a power vacuum if he abdicates his crown that will lead to strife and confusion among his daughters and discord in his kingdom, yet he does so anyway, etc.
Speaking of vacuums... a simple example of this phenomenon occurred to me only recently.
Fourteen years ago, I purchased a fine, expensive vacuum cleaner. This machine cost over a thousand dollars back then and it's been worth every penny, as it is so well made that it probably will outlast me on this planet. During those years, I've often come across a warning in manuals and brochures that if one persisted in dragging the machine around by its hose, or lifting it by same, one would eventually loosen the electronic connections that give signals from the body of the vacuum to its end attachments and it would cease to function properly. The result: $300 to replace the hose and attachments.
Well, after 14 years of dragging the machine around by its hose and lifting it by same, the inevitable has occurred. I need to replace the hose and attachments.
D'OH!
Why didn't I simply use the knowledge I had instead of ignoring it? Well, for the first 14 years everything seemed fine, reminding me of the joke about the guy who wanted to see what it was like to jump off a tall building and thinking to himself during his descent, "so far, so good."
The very same goes for organizations and the people within it.
What knowledge of our organization, its processes, its people, its products and services, our customers, our markets, and our society are we choosing to ignore because, "so far, so good?"
One good way to check this collective syndrome of disowning our own knowledge in organizations is to conduct regular brainstorm sessions that use a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis or Environmental Scan as a starting off point. This tactic forces us to see what's going on in and around our organization, assess the level of threat or opportunity, and to consciously go about doing something about it.
Look around you. Check all your mirrors. Exercise your peripheral vision. What's sneaking up on you in your environment that you hadn't noticed before? What is the market telling you about your products and services? What are your customers telling you every single day in their words and actions, and even more importantly, in what they don't say and don't do? What threats or opportunities right there in front of you have you not taken the time and effort to act upon?
What do you already know to be true that you haven't shared with others or acted upon yourself?
Don't end up in your own self-made tragedy like Hamlet or Lear, or be like that poor guy falling from the skyscraper thinking everything is going to work out just fine, or that dolt in upstate New York staring at a sea of dust bunnies armed only with an expensive vacuum cleaner which no longer works.
Act now on what you know to be true. It's why you're alive.
Posted by Val Vadeboncoeur at October 23, 2007 07:28 PM
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