|
Rick Maurer Tip #68
Leading Change and the Knowing-Doing Gap |
|
December 14, 2009
Greetings!
Leading Change and the Knowing-Doing Gap
Last month I asked you a provocative question: Since the failure rate of change efforts still seems to hover around 70 percent after all these years, what's missing?
A couple of people mentioned the knowing-doing gap (first introduced by Pfeffer and Sutton in their book, The Knowing-Doing Gap). That prompted me to go back to this book. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.
Knowing-doing gap fits perfectly. I have had many clients who read all the right books and knew what to do, but somehow just couldn't turn that knowledge into action. A client once told me, "You know, Rick, if we just did what was in your books, we wouldn't need you." Good point. Of course my reply was, "So, why aren't you doing those things?" And that brings us back to the gap.
I think we spend way too much time attempting to pour knowledge into people's heads (including our own) and would do better to mind the gap and get curious why knowledge isn't turning into action as often as we might like.
The phrase "the knowing-doing gap" is a helpful reminder to me. Maybe I would do well to spend more time finding ways to bridge the gap than in reading yet another book. The concept of a knowing-doing gap helps me give better advice to clients when they are about to inflict another PowerPoint presentation on their staffs, or send people off to training on a subject that they probably already know a fair amount about. I'm not trying to be cute, but the gap is where it's at.
Change Management Open Source Project
I just added some fascinating Podcasts to this free online community at www.changeOSP.com.
My interview with Professor Jean Bartunek, in which we discuss research on change in organizations.
A short Podcast with manager, Lance Freedman, on how he has used the cycle of change in planning and conducting meetings for the past eight to nine years. If you like using the cycle, he has some very practical things to say. (If you don't know the cycle of change, you can read about it in the Introduction to Change without Migraines e-book on the site. It is free as well.)
My interview with Dick Axelrod, a pioneer in large group interventions, on an elegant way to think about planning both large and small meetings. The Meeting Canoe is something that Dick and the late Kathie Dannemiller developed so that people could create their own ways of getting people involved in planning.
Warm regards,
Rick Maurer
President
|
