The Knowing-Doing Gap
As Todd writes in his review for The 100 Best:
Knowing what to do is not the problem. 11,000 business books, 80,000 MBAs, and $60 billion worth of corporate training each year show the wide avenues by which knowledge is dispensed and acquired.
11,000 business books a year! Staggering, isn't it? That number was the motivating force behind Jack and Todd's book—they wanted to use their combined quarter century's worth of experience in the business book industry to sift through and find, evaluate, recommend and review the best business books ever written. Really, it's the key motivation behind everything we do—to act as a quality filter, making it easier for you to find the books truly worthy of your time and attention, books that will help you at work and in life. It's the reason Jack Covert selects a series of books each month for review as, well, Jack Covert Selects. It's the reason our daily blog exists, and it's certainly the reason we're giving away books here for free every week. And, while it's scope is broader than business alone, it's a big part of the reason we continue to spread the ideas and hard-won knowledge of authors and others on ChangeThis.
But, while acquiring ideas and knowledge is a critical step in business, it is only the first step. Without action to follow it up, business literacy is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine... or sonar listening gear on your back porch. It is the action that ideas drive, and the innovation that knowledge enables, that is of true value to your business and our economy. And, it is how to turn that knowledge into action that our offer today, The Knowing-Doing Gap, discusses. It was written by two Professors of Organizational Behavior at Stanford, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton. (You may know Bob Sutton from his more recent bestseller, The No Asshole Rule, which the iBW OG covered upon it's release in 2007.)
"[T]here are fewer and smaller differences in what firms know than in their ability to act on that knowledge."
Action usually means change, and change can be scary, especially to those who grew up in and have benefited from the way things have been done in the past. How often have you been frustrated at work, having had a new idea or better way to address a problem shot down by a superior who was all too comfortable with the status quo. Or, perhaps you've experienced that so many times you don't even bother to take your ideas to anybody anymore, feeling you know what the outcome of that conversation would be. Perhaps you've stopped looking for new ideas and solutions altogether and confine yourself within the parameters of convention, even if you feel you know better than those who designed the system you're working in. Pfeffer and Sutton know your pain... they've actually studied it. As the authors state:
Fear helps create knowing-doing gaps because acting on one's knowledge requires that a person believe he or she will not be punished for doing so—that taking risks based on new information and insight will be rewarded, not punished. When people fear for their jobs, their futures, or even for their self-esteem, it is unlikely that they will feel secure enough to do anything but what they have done in the past. Fear will cause them to repeat past mistakes and re-create past problems, even when they know better ways of doing the work.
Pfeffer and Sutton challenge what they view as bad management—fear-based management—for this impediment to change, and even call out two other books for promoting it. (One of which, Only the Paranoid Survive, is also in The 100 Best. We'll cover that book here soon.) Even when the fear is banished from the process, however, the chatter about innovation and change doesn't always yield action—but rather acts as a substitute for real action.
That is just a sampling of the issues the authors address... there are many more besides. You can think of this book as self-help for your business. It reaffirms some things you already know, challenges some traditional notions of what kind of culture is necessary in a successful organization, and gives you the tools and inspiration necessary to get to work on changing the life of your business.
We have 25 copies available.
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