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 Three broad spheres were represented at the conference: business, government
and academic research. They shared their successes and failures at managing
knowledge and learning. Despite assumptions that each of these disciplines
has a unique set of imperatives and impediments, participants spoke more of
what they had in common than of what separated them.
All human organizations—not just government institutions—are subject to
politics. All human organizations—not just business institutions—have
competitive imperatives similar to market mechanisms. All human
organizations—not just academic institutions—have to learn, create,
transfer, retain and, at times, discard knowledge.
The session on learning in the private sector was less concerned about
politics—or even profit—than with how and on what executives and employees
focus, and how they convert perception to action.
Prof. John Stopford of the London
Business School discussed the usefulness of dreams, as a way of prioritizing
values that have to be made manifest in the organization. Such a focus on
the soft side of strategy has turned out to be more successful than he would
have thought. “Even the hard-bitten analysts are realizing that the ‘soft’
issues of dreams and organizational behavior have as much or greater
influence on bottom-line performance than the traditionally measured
tangible assets.”
Histories of Aventis and Nokia would seem to prove Stopford’s point when he
says that transformation initiatives succeed only if they operate on three
levels: cognitive strategy, organizational context and emotional context.
That triangle is one of three critical elements for translating strategic
intent from knowledge into action.
In order to overcome inertia, “strategic intent has to be interpreted in
ways that make it more than just a set of financial criteria for choice,” he
says. “It has to become part of a set of values that help create passion and
commitment for moving forward.”
Ultimately, strategic intent also has to be elevated to the status of
belief. This involves distinguishing between dreams and visions.
Stopford describes a path exactly the reverse of the way most firms approach
their competitors: “The dream informs the belief structure in the
organization,” Stopford explains. “The beliefs inform the choices made for
creating and discarding resources of all kinds. The processes of resource
choice determine strategy. The strategy determines the assets that
determine position in the market.”
 Scarcity of intellectual attention for human perception and cognition is a
constraint that limits people’s ability to comprehend and understand. The
alternative strategy is distraction and avoidance in information processing
and knowledge creation by individuals. This requires a shift from thinking
of knowledge as residing with individuals to thinking of knowledge as
embedded in a group or community. In this way, not only can companies find
effective ways to translate their ongoing experience into knowledge,
creating new knowledge, but can also transfer that knowledge across time and
space to leverage firm-specific knowledge.
But when does an organization change focus? Practically speaking,
says Thomas Sattelberger, Executive Vice President for Products and
Services at
Lufthansa AG, “Organizations and individuals only learn when the
water is up their noses.”
At that point, he says, there is an unfortunate bias towards
action. “Actionism at the top creates inertia or even cynicism in middle
management,” he explains. “There is a need to reflect more before action.” (Aktionismus
is a German word that describes situations when people act without
sufficient reflection.)
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