Shifting from the knowledge paradigm to the understanding paradigm…

Moving the world from a knowledge-based economy to an understanding-based economy means making radical changes to people management, corporate systems, and human resources in organizations. It means leading and organizing in a totally different way.

We’ve been living in a world that rewards those who know what other people don’t know, those who have information that other people don’t have. We now live in a world where everyone knows almost everything. With the technological revolution, knowledge has become a widely available commodity.

If everyone knows everything, if everyone has access to every bit of information, then competence – the ability to compete – is not about knowing things. Competence has moved into another area… we call it understanding.

Your ability to compete is about having more understanding than your competitors, not about having more knowledge. Being future ready depends upon continually expanding your understanding, continually reinventing yourself. To meet this demand, every employee must be a leader, not a follower.

Imagine what HR could do with a speed camera that measures each employee’s pace of development. We offer this speed camera… are you interested?

All the leaders we meet want their people to be more creative, to do more and to take more ownership. Yet people can only create, do, and take ownership for what they understand.

The painful reality is… you can’t just give the solution to people who can’t yet execute the solution, some of whom may never choose to or be able to do so. Even worse would be to demand that these same people come up with the solution themselves – without first giving them an opportunity to develop.

You have to take risks and bet on your creative talents to attract and keep them. The ability to take risks is directly correlated with the sense of security in the organization. It’s got to be ok to do wrong (though not to keep repeating the same mistakes).

This also means you have to organize the flow, the succession planning in the organizational structure – the in, out, up and/or sideways. Talents hate still standing water and will be the first to leave when it stops moving.