13. The Knowing-Doing Gap (management series)

This is a fun one. 2000 book review in the Harvard Business School Press, 2000. The book is The Knowing-Doing Problem, by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton

Knowing what to do is not enough
"The gap between knowing and doing is more important than the gap between ignorance and knowing."

"Better ways of doing things cannot remain secret for long."

"Sustainable competitive advantage is built by doing things that are difficult to imitate."

Talk and Action
There is a "tendency to equate talking about something with actually doing something about it."

"Mission statement is one of the common means that organizations use ot substitute talk for action." :-) Love this one. So true.

"We should form our impression of others based on how well they perform" which "can be assessed only wih a greater time lag." This "clashes with the natural human tendency to form impressions quickly" and "does not fit within the time scale of the performance appraisal..."

"One of the best ways of sounding smart is to be critical of the ideas of other people. It is always possible to fid a reason to say no to some idea or proposal."

People also "try to impress others by using complex language." "Simple talk is valuable because it is more likely to lead to action." Mobilizing rhetoric:

• casts an imaginative vision of the future
• gives a realistic portrayal of the present
• a selective description of the pasat
• gives a sense of urgency

Memory and Thinking

"Memory often serves as a substitute for thinking."

"Most human beings are inclined to avoid evidence that disconfirms what they believe."

Three main ways to avoid relying on the past as a mindless guide to action:

• Start a new organization or subunit.
• Make people mindful of problems with doing things in old ways.
• Encourage radical decentralization--the more competent a central HQ is, the less the whole organization needs to think. :-)

Fear and Knowledge

"Driving fear out of the organization helps to encourage courageous behavior."

"People who fear their bosses not only hide bad news but may also lie about how things are going."

Measurement and Judgment

"What gets measured gets done. What is not measured tends to be ignored."

"Individual performance in an interdependent system is always difficult or impossible to measure."

Good measurement practices:

• global in scope
• focused more on processes and less on final outcomes
• reflect the model, culture, and philosophy of the organization
• a sense that the measurement system itself is in process and subject to evaluation
• relatively few metrics

Internal Competition

"Excessive internal competition can destroy the moral fabric of many organizations."

"Copying others inside the firm is perceived to have negative career consequences."

"Pygmalion effect. When teachers believe that their students will perform well, they do."

"Competition inhibits learning and creativity." "Intellectual tasks that require learning and inventing new ways of doing things are best performed under drastically different conditions than tasks that have been done repeatedly in the past."

Turning Knowledge into Action

We can minimize the knowing-doing gap by dealing with the following factors:

• Ask "why" before "how"
• We learn by doing and teaching, not by talking about it. "Learning is best done by trying a lot of things."
• Action counts more than elegant plans and concepts. 
• There is no doing without mistakes.
• Drive out fear. "Reasonable failure should never be received with anger."
• Fight the competition, not each other. Cooperation is good.
• Measure what matters.
• It matters how leaders spend their time.