It’s been four months since many of us vowed to stick with our New Year’s resolutions. How is yours going? One study showed that more than half of those who made resolutions gave up within six months, and only 9% feel they successfully met their goals by year-end. We make resolutions because we know we can improve elements of our lives, and that doing so will make us happier, healthier or more successful. So if we know these changes would be good for us, why are we so bad at acting on that knowledge?
Majesco’s recently published research report, Strategic Priorities 2017 – Knowing vs. Doing, illustrates that insurance companies are struggling with their own “resolutions” to respond to a rapidly changing marketplace, and make changes to create growth opportunities. There is a growing gap between insurers that know about the changes and insurers that are doing something about them. Responses to the Strategic Priorities survey reflect an awareness of the pace of change that is unfolding unheralded challenges and opportunities. Unfortunately, turning awareness into doing, with actionable initiatives, is elusive, creating an ever-widening gap between leaders who are taking action and those who are not.
The gap between knowing and doing is a common phenomenon most can relate to both personally and professionally. Many have picked up new ideas from a conference, learned new best practices in a best-selling business book, or paid for consulting advice to improve our strategy or operations. After we return to the office, put the book on the shelf or review the consulting recommendations, we too often return to doing things the same ways we always have.
See also: How to Plant in the Greenfields
Expand this individual pattern to a larger, organizational level to put our survey results in context: even though most companies know they should respond to key internal and external challenges to create promising growth opportunities – and more importantly to ensure survival – many are still only thinking about doing something, at best. Why is there a gap between knowing and doing? How can it be overcome?
A good starting point for answering both of these questions is the book The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action, by Jeffrey Pfeffer.
Knowledge unused is opportunity lost
Stanford professor Pfeffer called his research and writing of The Knowing – Doing Gap,
“…a quest to explore one of the greatest mysteries in organizational management: why knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fails to result in action or behavior consistent with that knowledge.”
Almost as if he didn’t want his book to fall into the same lot of business books that make the best seller list but result in no action, Pfeffer hedges against the actionability of his own recommendations, saying,
“We found no simple answers to the knowing-doing dilemma. Given the importance of the knowing-doing problem, if such simple answers existed, they would already have been widely implemented.”
Pfeffer’s research uncovered eight recurring themes that help understand the causes of the problem and, by extension, lead to ideas on how to overcome them:
- Why before how — Philosophy is important. Knowing why you should do something is as critical as how you do it.
- Knowing comes from doing and teaching others how – Learning by doing, coaching and teaching can be more impactful than by simply thinking or talking.
- Action counts more than elegant plans and concepts – Taking action before plans are fully formed can accelerate both learning and results, compared to relying on end-to-end, complex plans that rely on flawless execution.
- There is no doing without mistakes. What is the company’s response to mistakes? – In building a culture of action, one of the most critical elements is what happens when things go wrong. Are mistakes used for learning or as a trigger for punishment?
- Fear fosters knowing-doing gaps, so drive out fear – If failures are viewed as grounds for punishment (instead of learning) employees will avoid acting on knowledge and new ideas, and continue to take the “safe” route of old habits.
- Beware of false analogies: fight the competition, not each other – Free markets are based on healthy competition with other companies, but competition within organizations is not healthy.
- Measure what matters and what can help turn knowledge into action – Just because something is easy to measure (i.e. data is available) doesn’t mean it should be measured; companies have too many metrics that are backward-looking and outcome-focused and too few that are future-looking and process-focused.
- What leaders do, how they spend their time and how they allocate resources, matters – Good leaders know it is not their job to know and decide everything, but instead create an environment where there are a lot of people who both know and do.
- A portfolio of new ideas is like a pot of gold, ready to be invested.
- Testing ideas is common (and fast).
- Mistakes and failures are learning tools.
- The organization is unified behind an action-oriented, innovation-led approach.
