Review of "The Knowing-Doing Gap"

The basic premise of this book by two Stanford profs, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, is that in our information age, we're pretty much awash in information. As a consequence, we typically "know" what to do as an organization, but for a variety of reasons, we don't actually "do" what we know, hence the "Knowing-Doing Gap" title. (Interestingly, their second book, Hard Facts, seems to make almost the opposite argument that we go around "doing" all sorts of things that we believe to be true, but that really aren't true because we haven't done enough critical examination of the issues involved.)

But back to the problem of doing. What are the issues involved? The authors focus on five.

1) Lots of institutions "talk" issues to death and assume that since they have these nice long-range planning documents that they're actually implementing what they say they are. Wrong. Although they don't use this quote, I was reminded of Napoleon's saying that "in love, as in war, first I engage, and then I see what can be done." Not the most pleasant of fellows, that Napoleon, and one could certainly wonder about the ends toward which all his "doing" were directed, but the military's constraint training refrain of "a good plan now is better than a great plan after the battle is over" is certainly appropriate.

2) Lots of institutions get too stuck in their own "memory" of how things have been, and therefore should be, done. How many times have you heard "we've always done it that way." As a bit of a Burkean myself, I'm resistant to the jettisoning of institutional ethos that "memory bashing" might imply, but the authors are fairly nuanced in their description of these ingrained organizational behaviors.

3) "Fear" is perhaps the biggest item on their list, and the authors make frequent reference to TWM guru Deming's argument that the most important means of improving institutional quality is to "drive out fear." So much for Machiavelli's "it is better for the Prince to be feared than loved"?

4) Most helpful for me was the chapter on how "measurement" can obstruct good judgment. The problems with measurement are many, but given their emphasis in their second book on "good" measurement, you can tell that they're not rejecting "all" measurement, just a lot of the short-term, end-result oriented measurement that most organizations follow (share price, for instance).

5) I was intrigued with the authors concerns about "internal competition," especially their points about individualized merit pay. See my post on "merit pay done right" for further reflections on this topic - http://triple-e-education.blogspot.com/2007/06/merit-pay-done-right.html.

The authors then conclude with illustrative examples of firms that appear to have surmounted the "knowing-doing gap" and then eight suggestions for how to "turn knowledge into action."

1) Why before How. In other words, you need to really understand your mission and goals before you can figure out things like what to measure.

2) Knowing comes from doing and teaching others. The authors particularly laud AES for its radical decentralization of authority, but they also emphasize any sort of program in which people learn by doing and teaching.

3) Action counts. In general, an organization is better off doing all sorts of pilots and experiments instead of having long discussions about the "ideal" solution.

4) There is no doing without mistakes. The best institutions realize that people will fail and that real learning comes from that failure. Not acting is the much bigger sin than acting incorrectly.

5) Drive out fear. Much of the emphasis here was on eliminating heirarchy, both perceived and real.

6) Fight the competition, not each other. With Southwestern, for instance, it's always "us versus them." Maybe it's not very enlightened, but it's darn successful.

7) Measure what matters. Pick a small number of items that get at core processes instead of short-term indicators of institutional end results. In the case of higher education, for example, this might mean looking at NSSE results instead of number of books published by the faculty.

8) What leaders do will become what the institution does. Organizations eventually follow the leader.

There's a lot more detail that I could go into including some particular policy prescriptions that might appropriate for an institution such as JBU, but I think I'll leave those conversations for separate posts, such as the merit pay issue, when I have time.