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n Wisdom can only come from the balanced, effective application of
tacit and explicit knowledge. The firm can only access and exploit
tacit knowledge if it takes specific steps to:

– Demonstrate that people and their thoughts are respected;

– Build commitment around an inspirational and shared vision;

– Develop a culture in which ideas and learning are daily realities
at every level and communication is genuinely two way.

n The imagination of our people can be stimulated by the successes
of others if, and only if, we develop a “leapfrog mentality”.
Benchmarking, as it is usually practised, leads only to a “me too”
attitude which can only succeed if the competition stands still,
kindly waiting for us to catch up. They do not, so the question:
“how do we do it better and cheaper?” is one that cannot be asked
too many times or of too many people.

n Rather than trying to identify best practice, managers should be
designing better than best practice. “Managers must not attempt
to manage change, it is too late for that. They must strive to get
ahead of change” (Peter Drucker at a conference, 11 December
1998). We get ahead of change only by initiating it. To initiate
change we need to ask timely, relevant questions.

n The “strategic knowledge unit” is analogous to putting strategic
planning into the hands of specialists. It becomes worse than a dry,
academic exercise, it becomes somebody’s turf, because in an
organizational setting “power flows to she or he who knows”. What
is known must be shared and since people are generally less than
inclined to share they must be questioned – and rewarded for
giving pertinent answers.

n If reward, sanctions and legitimacy are decreasingly becoming the
bases for organizational power then expert power, status power
(through experience and assumed knowledge), and referent power
(the power that comes from being the chosen role model because of
past success – a consistently over-hyped example is Jack Welch),
will increasingly tempt those who wish to progress more than they
want the firm to prosper, to be a barrier to creating the learning
organization.

n Team success depends increasingly on consensus and consensus
only works where change is so fast and so different that the past is
not a reliable guide to the future and where relevant knowledge is
spread among the population in such a way that even the
knowledge holders are unaware of the utility of what they know
until other pieces of the jigsaw are available. The effective
executive directs the assembly of that jigsaw by asking the killer
questions.

Introduction xv