The Idea in Brief
Many companies are plagued by a particular kind of inertia—employees knowing too much and doing too little. This knowing-doing gap can often be traced to a basic human propensity: the willingness to let talk substitute for action. When confronted with a problem, people act as though discussing it, formulating decisions, and hashing out plans for action are the same as fixing it. A particular type of talk is an especially insidious inhibitor of action: “smart talk.” The seeds of this talk are often sown in business school and corporate life, where leadership potential is equated with the ability to speak intelligently—and often. People who can engage in such talk generally sound confident and articulate; they can spout facts and may even have interesting ideas. But such people often exhibit the less benign aspects of smart talk as well: they focus on the negative, and they favor unnecessarily complex or abstract language. The former tendency lapses into criticism for criticism’s sake; the latter confuses people. Both tendencies can stop an action plan in its tracks.
The Idea in Practice
Organizations that are able to overcome the knowing-doing gap share five characteristics:
1. They have leaders who know and do the work. When leaders have an intimate knowledge of the workings of their business, they’re better able to separate smart talk from discussions that produce results.
2. They have a bias for plain language and simple concepts. “They focus on a few straightforward priorities that have clear implications for action.” In 1997, Steve Jobs helped launch Apple’s turnaround by reducing its product line from 15 to four, and by focusing the company’s product development and marketing efforts on those four platforms.
3. They frame questions by asking “how,” not just “why.” To prevent a culture of criticism from flourishing, you need to have informal rules about how ideas are analyzed. It’s okay to ask critical questions and to raise objections, but the conversation cannot be allowed to stop there—the people making the objections should be asked to offer suggestions for overcoming the obstacles they’ve identified. When used in this manner, debate and discussion don’t serve as a cover for inaction, they lead to genuine problem solving.
4. They have strong mechanisms to close the loop. Not all talk is aimless; still, it helps to have in place mechanisms that ensure that the decisions reached are actually implemented. At Cypress Semiconductor, when people commit to completing a task by a certain date, that information is entered into the company’s computer system. If the deadline is missed, the parties responsible may find that their computers don’t work.
5. They believe experience is the best teacher. Learning by doing is an old-fashioned notion. Sometimes it means jumping into a project before you’re sure that it will work, or before all the details have been worked out. But “enlightened trial and error,” as David Kelley, CEO of IDEO Product Development, puts it, “outperforms the planning of flawless intellects.”
Consider two stories, both sadly true and sadly typical.