In all my work whether it’s about organisational agility, leadership, marketing or transformation, I am increasingly of the opinion that the critical capability of the modern organisation is the ability to learn fast. And I don’t mean training or new skills (though this too is not unimportant). I mean to learn about the optimal way to navigate unpredictable and uncertain environments. To learn about changing customer behaviours and needs and how to serve them in exceptional ways. To learn about where the opportunity is in the new possibilities created by technology. In fast-moving, low-growth, competitive environments the ability to learn, adapt and execute is a superpower.
So if this is increasingly the source of advantage businesses need to sytematize learning. When thinking about how an organisation can develop systematic learning I think it’s useful to think about this across two dimensions: the diversity or polarity of knowledge, inputs and perspectives that the business can draw from, and the degree to which knowledge can flow easily around the business (aligned to the idea of ‘stocks and flows’ of knowledge which I’ve described before).
Why are these two dimensions so important? Cognitive diversity matters because at a fundamental level it enables you to solve problems and challenges better. Studies which analysed 150 senior teams conducted by Alison Reynolds of Ashridge Business School and David Lewis of London Business School showed that cognitively diverse teams find solutions to problems faster than non-diverse teams. They measured the level of knowledge processing in the teams – how much they use existing knowledge when facing new situations against how much they generate new knowledge. And they also measured perspective – the degree to which team members use their own expertise when facing new situations against orchestrating or drawing on the expertise and ideas of others. This work found that higher diversity in how teams think and tackle challenges correlates with high performance.
And yet you can have all the diverse knowledge in the world but if it’s not accessible or brought together in a way that enables true value to be created performance will always be sub-optimal. So knowledge sharing matters because in the age of omnichannel customer experience and the need to break down organisational and functional silos the degree to which knowledge flows are available and usable has a direct impact on innovation and growth.
Good knowledge diversity without sufficient sharing reinforces siloes. High-levels of knowledge sharing without high-levels of polarity in inputs results in a good flow of limited perspectives. A lack of both dimensions means shallow, isolated and poorly connected pockets of expertise.
Bringing these two aspects together helps to truly catalyse the value that a business can derive from the existing stocks of knowledge that it has, the new knowledge that it is (hopefully) creating continuously, and the knowledge that it can draw from from outside of the organisation. If you want to know what the competitive advantage of the future will be that’s it right there.
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