Interesting post by Dennis Howlett at AccMan (here). I’ve always made a point of including folks who can and will challenge my thinking. As Dennis says:
I like discovering smart people who can make connections that I miss, didn’t consider or just plain forgot.
The challenge for me is to set up my organization in a way that makes these smart folks feel rewarded and recognized. However, some of the react in ways that are counterproductive — as soon as they get formal authority, they start hoarding info, or relying on hierarchy to transmit/receive info. Dennis puts the challenge well:
[W]e continue to mistake our knowledge as partly defining the power we wield. In a knowledge based economy, that’s a fallacy, an illusion that serves to bind us to the past.
Genuine and lasting differentiation is not defined by how much we know but by how much we share.
Filed under: Collaboration, Communications, Knowledge Management, Leadership, Organizational Change Management, Performance Management
