Consulting Chronicles: The Knowing-Doing Gap

The “Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action” by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton is one the first books that I read in Graduate School and remember doing a book report for a class. The authors define the Knowing-Doing gap as: “The challenge of turning knowledge about how to enhance organizational performance into actions consistent with that knowledge.”

This book definitely struck a chord with me when I read it back in school and I have returned to ideas and recommendations in this book throughout my career. Over and over again, I have caught myself not doing something even though I knew exactly what needed to be done. In many cases, I not only knew what needed to be done but I also knew why it needed to be done and how to get it done. Even though I knew the why, what, and how, I didn’t take the necessary action in more instances than I would like to admit.

Hindsight being 20–20, whenever I looked back at a challenge or problem I faced, the failure to act is what I homed in as the key barrier. The question is: if I knew what to do, how to do it, and why it was important to do, why did I not do the necessary things? According to the authors of “Knowing-Doing Gap”, just knowing what to do isn’t enough. The authors point out that there are 2000+ business books published every year (and the number keeps increasing), billions of dollars spent on training, and hundreds of thousands of business school graduates and lots of business school research. There is definitely no lack of knowledge.

What then is preventing people from taking action? The authors highlight that there are forces that undermine an organization’s ability to turn knowledge into action. Pfeffer and Sutton outline 5 elements that prevent organizations from turning knowledge into action.

1. When Talk Substitutes for Action
2. When Memory Is a Substitute for Thinking
3. When Fear Prevents Acting on Knowledge
4. When Measurement Obstructs Good Judgment
5. When Internal Competition Turns Friends into Enemies

When Talk Substitutes for Action: Organizations treat Talking about something as equivalent to actually doing something about it. Talk happens now, action happens much later (if at all it happens). People get ahead by sounding smart, not by making sure that smart things happen. We have all seen this in action — people making decisions and thinking that substitutes action, making presentations as a substitute for action, preparing documents as a substitute for action, coming up with catchy mission/vision statements as a substitute for action, and planning as a substitute for action. All these are necessary steps and crucial for success but none by itself translates to action.

When Memory is a Substitute for Thinking: Organizations use memory as a substitute for thinking. This is something I hear quite often when asked why a business process can’t be streamlined. ‘We have always done it this way and we don’t want to change.’ In many organizations ‘sacred cows’ are things that need to be left alone and no one talks about. These are policies and procedures that were once useful and crucial but may no longer be relevant. Alternate ways of thinking are not even considered as things worked when we rolled out that process and we haven’t changed since. Things become even more difficult if past initiatives yielded big results. With success, organizations get complacent and shy away from action. The danger of precedent can hold organizations from taking action.

When Fear Prevents Acting on Knowledge: A study by Princeton Survey Research Associates found that only a third of U.S workers trust their companies to keep their promises. Why is that relevant? People are afraid that they will be blamed. People fear losing their job if an action they take is not in line with what the organization has done. The only way to drive out fear is if the Leaders in the organization are compassionate and show the team that doing the right thing is more important than worrying about fear or blame or job loss.

When Measurement Obstructs Good Judgment: This is when measurements that organizations put in place get in the way of doing the right thing. These measurements could focus on short-term financial results rather than long-term success. In some cases, measurements are overly complex, which prevents people from taking action. Organizations also in many cases focus too much on in-process measures but not enough on outcome measures.

When Internal Competition Turns Friends Into Enemies: This also happens more than Leaders in organizations will agree to. Embedded within certain organizations are internal competitive dynamics, which creates knowing-doing gaps. This undermines teamwork and knowledge sharing.

Now we know why Knowing-Doing Gap exists in organization. So what? Recently, I visited a client and one the things the Sr. Program Manager mentioned made me think of the Knowing-Doing gap. In my role, I visit clients to provide advisory support or check in on team members and provide the necessary support. When I asked the Sr. Program Manager how the team was doing and what the team can do better, she said that a lot of what is being asked by the Delivery Team are things that they already covered with the Sales team. The client team loved all the questions but felt that they were repeating themselves unnecessarily. The suggestion from the Sr. Program Manager was that we should have a program where proper handoff happens between Sales and Services team. She was absolutely right! We definitely need such a program to avoid what happened. We don’t want to ask the same questions that was already answered. The problem? We already have a full-fledged program specifically for that called the Sales-to-Service Transition.

The Sales team knew about the program. The Delivery team knew about the program. So, why didn’t they actually do a proper transition? Why did the knowledge not get translated to action?

In another client visit, I met with the SVP who was the overall Program Sponsor for the digital transformation program. He was extremely pleased with how hard the team worked, how much they have accomplished, and was optimistic about where the program was going. However, he was concerned that proper governance was not happening in the program. His feedback was that things don’t get escalated to him frequently. Or, even if they are escalated, it is too late to take any meaningful action. As an example, he mentioned that the team struggled to make key process decisions as there were competing requirements from different regions. When this bubbled up to him, he put a process in place, which everyone agreed to. Unfortunately, that process did not work as the person he appointed as the decision maker kept deferring to others. He expected that the Program Manager would have escalated this to him. She did not escalate. By the time he came to know, valuable time was lost, and a key milestone was in jeopardy.

Governance and escalation are well established processes that we train our Program Managers on. And this Program Manager knew the importance of governance and escalating early. Why then didn’t she actually do it?

In the first example with Sales-to-Service transition, it was a scenario where ‘talk’ substituted action. The Sales Team and Delivery team talked about doing the transition, they talked about the different topics that will be covered as part of the transition, and they even picked a date for the transition. The plan was to go through the Sales-to-Service checklist. Unfortunately, the actual transition didn’t happen as the Sales Team got pulled into another client commitment, which required the transition meeting to be rescheduled. The Delivery Team then got busy and talk didn’t turn into action.

In the second example with governance and escalation, ‘fear’ prevented action from being taken. The Program Manager was afraid that her relationship with the SME that was appointed to make decisions would be deterred. So, she didn’t escalate that decisions weren’t being made.

So, what can we do when we realize that something wasn’t done or is not being done because of the knowing-doing gap? The authors recommend 8 steps to turn knowledge into action:

• Why before how: philosophy is important.
• Knowing Comes from Doing and Teaching others How.
• Action counts more than elegant plans and concepts.;
• There is no doing with mistakes. What is the company’s response?
• Fear fosters knowing-doing gaps, so drive out fear.
• Beware of false analogies: fight the competition, not each other.
• Measure what matters and what can help turn knowledge into action.
• What leaders do, how they spend their time and how they allocate resources, matters.

I have made and definitely seen inaction due to all 5 of the elements that the authors talk about. The first step is to identify if the problem at hand could be due to the knowing-doing gap. If it is, which of the 5 elements is causing the knowing-doing gap? More often than not, when there is inaction, it is not necessarily due to lack of knowledge but because of the knowing-doing gap. As important as knowledge is, it is not enough. We need to turn knowledge into action to get to our desired results. The 8 steps outlined will help us come up with a plan to turn knowledge into action.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.