Some thoughts around knowledge and decisions in a team

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”

Socrates

When I think back to the working world that I tentatively stepped into back in the late 80s it was vastly different to the working landscape now. For a start technology was pretty basic back then (in hindsight), there were no emails (can you imagine?), no internet, no smart phones, certainly no AI and I am struggling to remember anyone who worked remotely or from home. You could almost say it was a simpler time and in terms of leadership maybe it was. However, here is a different slant – it was more difficult back then! Why? Well in my opinion people spent more time with people face to face and therefore had to learn how to operate at a human level without the mask of technology.

This short article concentrates mostly on using combined team knowledge, but it is worth pointing out the importance of self-knowledge. This is not just about what you ‘know’, it is also about how well you know yourself. Talking openly about who you are and teams who let you know how you come across to others is so important – if you do not know who you are both in intent and reality then how do you integrate and operate in a high performing team?

Knowledge of self is also a vital pre-requisite for good leadership as expounded excellently by Chris Lowney in ‘Heroic leadership’ (2005) and James Scouller in ‘The three levels of leadership’ (2016).

When I run leadership programmes, they normally begin with modules looking at the self and then move on to look at teams and the wider business. This is a logical progression as the self is the foundation of leadership, just as culture is the foundation of a team. The link is clear, people make a team so therefore the people who build and feed into the team culture can either be a positive or negative influence. It is vital to know yourself and understand that people are different in many ways.

When it comes to using knowledge in a business context, I often hear the phrase ‘best practice’. This is something that clients ask me about a lot. They will say things like, “we want to instigate and use best practice”, or “can you help us integrate best practice into our strategy planning?”

What does best practice mean?

Write down your own thoughts.

Best for who, for when and in what context? Will something that is best practice in one scenario work in every situation? Nope! Best practice or current practice has usually been predominantly built up from years of experience and ways of doing things in the past that have worked. That is great – like the old saying goes, ‘if it ain’t broken then don’t fix it’.

But…

How often does your team stop and question its practices? Do you take the time to thoroughly review your policies, procedures, ways of working and thinking? Or is using ‘best practice’ simply a lazy way out of really assessing how you operate?

Things continually progress, especially in the modern world that we live and work in. The pace of change is phenomenal so what we knew yesterday is not the same as what we know today. Is your team adapting its practice accordingly? Many do not, they simply go on doing what they have always done because that is the way it has always been and if feels comfortable.

I have a story about monkeys but will leave that for another time...

Therefore, knowledge not challenged can be dangerous to the adaptability and future sustained success of a team. It can create a rut, a safety net if you like. We can pretend to continue to ‘know’ stuff that leads to the culture of ‘always done it that way’. Teams start using the term ‘best practice’, when what they are sometimes talking about is the practice that they have always done.

Maybe teams should start to replace ‘best practice’ with better thinking and a more flexible approach to using past knowledge to shape the present and plan for the future. It is worth pointing out that our knowledge will not keep up with change – it is always a step behind. Things change too quickly in the modern world for us to keep up.

Way back in the 80s when I first started working I would argue that it was much easier to keep up – there was less change, less ambiguity, less volatility and our ability to keep up with stuff was either ahead of the curve or level with it.

So, what can you do as a team?

Firstly, involve all team members in using knowledge for problem solving – use smaller baby steps and plan much shorter term. Understand that an individual cannot know everything but the combination of minds in a team is a powerful collective.

Secondly, it is vital to have a culture where new ideas can be tried without the fear of reprisal or punishment. Give people the scope to make mistakes and learn from them. A great idea is to create a realistic test environment to try new things out.

All the best.

Dave

Extract from www.teamfoundations.co.uk

www.thesuccessfactory.co.uk