The blind leading the deaf
Platitudes like “Be the most competitive enterprise”, “Provide customers with the best information to make the buying decisions!”, and “Unlock shareholder value!” are numbing to the ears. Yet sweeping strategy statements like these are often swiftly attached to an organization’s cultural facade–deploying “graffiti artists” to tag everything from interoffice memos to employee’s marquee screensavers–often with the expectation that if touted loud enough, an organization will realize the embodiment of the slogans.
These bumper sticker goals leave employees directionless or even cynical. Why then are executives swept off their feet, glowing with more passion than on their wedding night, when proclaiming these found keys to success? It’s primarily because the messenger has been immersed in the logic and conversations underlining the message for so long that when they speak abstractly, they are simply summarizing the wealth of knowledge in their minds. Frontline employees, however, are not privy to the underlining meaning and consequently hear only slick, opaque phrases that slide in one ear and out the other.
Ultimately, executives touting such messages are blinded, cursed by their knowledge, while the audience is deaf to the passion and depth of the message given. As a result, statements meant to ignite a strategic path all too often fall on deaf ears, only to become meaningless slogans.
A recent Harvard Business Review article (December 2006) addresses the curse of knowledge and the difficulties it poses in uniting employees behind an organization’s goals. The article points to a study conducted by Elizabeth Newton, a graduate student at Stanford University. The study was comprised of a game that assigned people one of two roles: “tapper” or “listener”. The goal was to see if the listener could determine what well-known song the tapper was rhythmically playing on a table. By the end of the experiment, 120 songs were tapped out, but surprisingly only three (2.5%) were guessed correctly.
I tried this experiment with my colleague, John Whittlesey, who, I should note, is a talented opera singer with very well tuned ear. I first tried the “Happy Birthday” song thinking for sure John would pick it up right away. I quickly arrived at the end of my composition and found a confused face staring back at me…hmmm maybe he wasn’t familiar with that one. So I tried another familiar tune and started to jam to the “Flintstones” theme song. Well, it didn’t take more than a glance to see this wasn’t going to work either. It didn’t take any encouragement on my part to find that the tables had turned. John quickly started to orchestrate, with gusto, a wonderful melody of noise. After its completion, I came to find out that it was the “Flintstones” theme song. Why on earth didn’t I recognize a song my ears should have been turned to, having just attempted it myself?
The article uses the study to illustrate what it calls the curse of knowledge; that is, it is impossible for the knowledge base (the tapper) to avoid understanding all of the underlining meaning supporting the knowledge shared (to avoid hearing the tune he’s performing). While the learner (the listener), struggles to decipher the knowledge that seems to be presented with such ease (witnesses a bizarre ritual set to a cacophony of noise that seems to effortlessly entertain the musician) and risks not internalizing the message, but instead relegating it in their mind as a noble-sounding plaque to hang in the organizations lobby.
Though the study means to demonstrate the deafening effect of information imbalance, I don’t believe it completely explains why I was not able to recognize John’s rendition of the “Flintstones” theme song. There was little information imbalance other than perhaps the difference in musical ability; I was familiar with the song, still in my mind from tapping it out moments prior, and familiar with the rules of the game, yet I missed the distinguishing notes all together. There was clearly a disconnect between my external and internal ear. Had I been given the task to orchestrate the “Flintstones” theme song, I would have no problem forming the song accurately in my mind. But if it were necessary to be taken to task to experience first hand, any knowledge shared (which success in the experiment seems to require), then we would still be running around in the buck, ducking from the thunder gods in the sky. So how have we been able skirt the information imbalances that exist between any two people and share knowledge over the millennium? It has been through the use of stories, analogies, anecdotes, and visual cues that have provided the concrete patterns on which to adapt one reality to the next.
In his book “Winning“, Jack Welch states that mission statements should be so real that “they smack you in the face with their concreteness” (Welch 14). He reminds the reader that despite Ben & Jerry’s crunchy granola, hippy, save the world persona, it still has “profitable growth” and “increasing value for stakeholders” as prominent elements in its mission statement. I agree with Jack that too often the reality escapes mission statements, however, no matter how “real” a strategy statement is, it still runs a great risk of becoming trite in the minds of the organization’s employees, who are permitted to escape the knowledge underlining each thought-provoked word.
The HBR article (cited above) used Trader Joes, a specialty food chain, as an example of a company that employs a visual description to bring concreteness to an abstract mission statement. Trader Joes describes its target customer as an “unemployed, college professor who drives a very, very used Volvo”. It’s a simple and exaggerated image, but its use provides the definition needed to bring its employees in tune with its goals. If you’ve been in a Trader Joes, you’ve witnessed customer service and product selection that would seem to fit the preferences of such a fictional customer.
Knowledge, whether conveyed in concise but ultimately complex strategy statements or solicited through an investigation of best practices, requires tangible and concrete stories, analogies, or visuals to ensure an effective translation and adoption. Current knowledge management resources are being invested in efforts focused almost exclusively on capturing knowledge bits from a network of internal or external experts. These efforts are creating repositories of “tappers” blindly dancing to their cacophonies and are cursed to fail.
Cheating knowledge
I get to witness OZ behind the curtain each evening from a student’s perspective as my wife, Kelly, works her magic correcting an endless cascade of term papers—all needing attention during this time of year before the semester’s end. This year I was enlisted to be OZ’s assistant, inheriting the task of scouring the Internet to find plagiaristic accomplishments. While it’s true that a thesaurus can easily imbue a high school student with scholarly tone, it cannot disguise the pubescent voice beneath it; so plagiarism is usually a fairly glaring offense. Kelly’s school, unfortunately, does not enforce great disciplinary rigor, so plagiarism has become prevalent, especially with the cut and paste ease of the Internet.
Checking for plagiarism has been a disturbing exercise for me. It’s surprisingly easy to find, if given enough time, yet somehow still eludes the judgment of proof. I have observed that the amateurs typically attempt to escape notice by stealthily working their way well past the 7th “o” in Goooooooooogle often using book reviews on Amazon or pulling thoughts from obscure sites that have a cozy feel to them, some with lovely repetitions of cat clipart nestled around the page borders. The professional pirates, however, find their booty by trolling the red-light district of intellect, visiting online shops, peddling college essays for as low as $5. These sites flash just enough of their wares to appear in search results, yet evade proof of a disingenuous student submission by requiring the purchase of the paper that appears to be that in hand—a trump card that any paying student can obtain. There are thousands of such sites and most provide justifications for plagiarism with contorted rationales that would make Freud blush.
Kelly’s Expository Writing class had the most plagiaristic feats. A class that’s purpose is to expose students’ ideas–reshaping the contextual ideas found in authors’ literary works to the uniquely individual perspective of each student—somehow reverted into a class concerned with stealing the ideas of others. Laziness may be the easiest diagnosis of the problem, but the culture of measurable outcomes that now seems deeply rooted in our leaning environments also shares some of the blame. Measurable standards are beneficial in setting benchmarks to ensure a level of proficiency, however, they have quickly overshadowed the ultimate goal of fostering independent, thoughtful, progressive, and knowing minds. As a result, the measure of an education has been further defined by raw outcomes and has in many ways transformed our learning institutions into production shops focused on efficiencies and end products rather than the rich process of self-realization.
Business is rightly rooted in value and efficiencies. But, like education, stands to suffer if measures and outcomes are permitted to overshadow innovation. The art of business is similar to expository writing; the success in reshaping ideas from multiple contexts to meet each unique, competitive environment is essential. Kelly’s bout with plagiarism illustrates the power and challenges of the hive mind. The Internet and other knowledge repositories impose on our ability to differentiate ourselves, our ideas, and our business strategies. Although the effortless accessibility of information has significantly shortened the knowledge cycle, it has also eased the ability to adopt ideas—stunting adaptive solutions and emboldening adoptive mindsets.
An HBR article by Al Jacobson, of Hartwell Associates, illustrates the impact search technologies have had on shortening the knowledge cycle and warns of the low returns organizations can expect if “knowledge management” continues to be seen as synonymous with “knowledge searching”. The article cites a study by Babson College’s Working Knowledge Center that asked more than 200 knowledge workers in four different organizations, each from a different industry, to keep a daily log over a ten-day period. The logs recorded over 3,000 knowledge interactions, which were organized into four categories:
• time spent searching for knowledge
• scheduling meetings with experts
• eliciting expertise
• interpreting knowledge
The distribution of time between the four categories was startling and ran against the tide of resources being sunk into knowledge repositories. The study found that employees were spending less than 17% of their time searching and scheduling (a surprisingly low percent) and more than 80% eliciting, interpreting, and applying (adapting the knowledge gained). Expertise location technologies along with global search portals like Google have matured and now effectively aggregate once dispersed information. The networks of information have been so effective that further investments in improving their ability will impact an increasingly insignificant piece of the knowledge-value continuum. The emphasis now needs to shift towards the knowledge adaptation side of the equation for the momentum in knowledge efficiency to continue. Ignoring this and failing to address the tendencies to cut short, or worse, avoid the required adapting of knowledge gained, threaten to undercut the efficiencies obtained thus far.
Kelly’s Expository Writing class dramatically cut short the knowledge cycle. Many of the students clearly benefited from knowledge efficiencies but rather than continuing the task at hand—adapting their thoughts to the literary context of the class—they adopted the knowledge they found as their own. The focus on business outcomes and measures particularly in the deployment of PI strategies such as Lean, which utilize techniques like the Kaizen method, often measure the number of ideas employees generate as a component of success. While the intent to reduce waste through small ideas from frontline employees is a noble concept, the emphasis on idea quotas as outcomes fosters a knowledge climate of “search and record”. This climate encourages the use of the search efficiencies, but does not address the needed task of shaping the found ideas to the unique competitive needs of an organization. The emphasis on idea generation for idea generation sake threatens to congest decision makers with hollow, plagiaristic ideas harvested from a fully deployed but misdirected workforce.
Misaligned expectations of the available information resources can backfire if not addressed. Knowledge management systems and global networks will never have all the answers let alone “the answer”, yet the ease of information often coddles those wishing to avoid the hard work of making the creative leaps to the adaptive answers required in success. These individuals exhaust their time and knowledge resources searching for the “silver bullet”, which may be the next mouse click away. Many confuse the Internet and knowledge management systems as answer banks rather than catalysts for progressive, self-generated solutions. Knowledge resources are coy mistresses for these “answer seekers” rather than the Muses they are intended to be.
Plagiarism is a temptation in any environment that gauges success by the number, completeness, and acceptability of ideas and information. Focus on such outcomes will define an organization’s most valuable asset (its employees) as an adoptable rather than adaptable resource. This cheats the organization from innovations gained through the learning process. In a competitive environment, the present is the past. Those seeking to adopt today’s knowledgebase will fail in the world of tomorrow and find the same grade on their strategic scorecards as Kelly’s plagiaristic students found on their report cards.