Customer Reviews

Knowledge Leadership: The Art and Science of the Knowledge-based Organization (KMCI Press)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hank Hadders does a fine job summarizing important features of Knowledge Leadership and I won't repeat any of his remarks.

Let me first say that this is a book I'll keep close to my desk for ready reference. It is full of practical advice about how to turn knowledge into learning. Cavaleri and Seivert recommend that we experiment with our behavior to generate concrete experience which we think thoughtfully about before deciding what is the value of what we have learned. Then we can apply our knowledge to take effective action to solve problems and make decisions.

This model is dynamic and meant to be acted upon continuously throughout our life. Knowledge is always provisional; that is, meant to be tested by some new experiment which generates experience that may or may not confirm what we think we know. By the way, what we think we know is often wrong. Cavaleri and Seibert convincingly demonstrate the power of our biases to lead us astray. Constant feedback from the environment and from those we work with is necessary to provide truth value to our knowledge.

I must admit, I loved this book and recommend it highly. Clearly written with many useful examples, Knowledge Leadership will help the reader to practice taking an active approach to learning that builds on constant experiment to deepen understanding of an ever changing world. This is not simply a book to be read and thought about; it is a call to action. In Knowlege Leadership Cavaleri and Seibert give us the tools to turn action into useful knowledge.

Buy this book. You won't be disappointed.

"Stimulate passion for (knowledge) exploitation ánd exploration !". That's the message Steven Cavaleri and Sharon Seivert offer us in this thoughtful new book. Organizations can create more value when the innovative knowledge leadership principles, described in this book produce results that are difficult to imitate. Knowledge leaders can discover unique ways to use knowledge to realize sustainable competitive advantage. But what does this really mean in practice? How do we get there? How can we become more pragmatic in using knowledge to improve performance - both as individuals and organizations? What can we learn from theory, science, business practice (companies as Toyota) and history ? These and many other questions are clearly answered by the authors all in the context of the intriguing process of what they call knowledge leadership.

Cavaleri, one of the founding fathers of what has come to be known as The New Knowledge Management (TNKM) and Seivert suggest to leaders that it's time to shift their perspective toward envisioning how knowledge can be used to drive performance to higher levels. And that knowledge in organizations is better led than managed. The book reflects this theme using the eclectic and inclusive thinking of its authors throughout all 359 pages of the book. For example, the authors use strict dichotomies between various learning styles, personality types, and organizational systems. And through their delicate balancing act, they always lead the reader to higher levels of synthesis, balance, and harmony in envisioning a new role for knowledge in companies. This book is aimed toward all levels of knowledge-workers, including everyone in a company from the CEO on down. Everyone can become a Knowledge Leader. The authors focus early in the book on the importance of Personal Knowledge Development - something that is missing from most conventional Knowledge Management (KM) approaches.

Knowledge Leadership is a rare book in that in builds on a deep philosophical understanding to explain how learning, knowledge and action can be united in the form of a practical knowledge strategy. The authors describe a new and wonderful unified Pragmatic framework with converging concepts from KM, OL, TQM and action learning, all based on the conceptual foundations established by renowned American intellectual, Charles Sanders Peirce. The authors use Peirce's philosophy of Pragmatism to intricately weave an approach that links knowledge to business performance by building upon the scientific method of experimentation.

The first six chapters deal with explaining a pragmatic approach to knowledge leadership, while chapters seven to eleven deal with using pragmatic knowledge to improve performance in both personal and corporate settings. Chapters twelve to fifteen describe the normative model of a pragmatic FAST-Knowledge-based Organization (FAST is an acronym that describes knowledge that is Functional + Timely and Adaptive + Sustainable). Finally chapter sixteen puts it all together providing a meta-framework using 5-Point Dynamic Mapping.

Knowledge Leadership is a colourful book that uses the dramatic personality archetypes first proposed by Arthur Koestler: the Yogi and Commissar. This provides a solid base for describing the roots of knowledge leadership found within theories of learning. Using this model, readers are able to assess their own knowledge-creating style. Chapter 3 presents a short form of the Knowledge-Bias profile. I found this profile an amazing tool to diagnose my own leadership style (and to compare it with the results of their cross-cultural study) to learn the benefits and limitations of my own style.

Organizational failures are often caused by ineffectiveness, but few management approaches address this problem. The authors stress the importance of pragmatic knowledge as the missing link for improving business performance. They carefully lay out the basic concepts of their model: a pragmatic and fallabilist perspective on knowledge. I agree with the authors that our own lessons of experience about what works best in practice, will enable us to know what actions are truly most effective. The authors take a bold step to propose a company-wide approach in which all people create pragmatic knowledge based upon their own problem solving experiences, and openly interact with others in Communities (of Inquiry) to validate new knowledge claims. It is clear that Knowledge Development is truly the domain of us all.

Cavaleri and Seivert then take a final, brave step in the last section of the book. They introduce a normative model called the FAST-Knowledge-Based Organization (KBO). It is a prescriptive model and specifies an end state vision and the necessary innovative organizational principles (self-organisation, balancing high levels of innovation and knowledge creation with improvement in productivity and efficiency), etc.

I rate this book with 5 stars. This book is very well written, easy to read (good summaries, stories and examples), and provides lots of new stimulating visions, concepts, models, and engaging assessment tools and tests. My conclusion is that the authors brilliantly (re)tell the tale of TNKM for a more general public in an understandable way, and by doing so enriched TNKM and management science with their elaborated concept- perhaps it should be called "The New Knowledge Leadership"? But how to deal with the tension between the new Knowledge Leader and an Old Organization?

Henk Hadders (Assen)