Last week, I took a fiction writing workshop in Las Vegas. It was five days of intense learning and writing. (I had a blast and can’t wait to take the next workshop.)
The first time I took a writing workshop, I learned that I had trouble adjusting to the timezone. Add in the writing, and I stumble through the week exhausted. That exhaustion means I often make bad-for-me food choices. I think I gained a couple of pounds the first few times I took one of these workshops.
I learned and knew the problems.
Now, I bring my breakfasts, because if I start the day with food that works for me, I’m more likely to make better choices later. I also learned to take naps, so I work with my exhaustion, not against it.
I used the knowing to change my doing.
But that’s just one example.
Most of us know we “should” act differently. Managers still micromanage—even though they say they know better. Drivers know not to slide through stop signs—and they still do. Drivers know not to try to drive around the train sign—and we still see tragedies when people do.
Knowing—alone—is never enough. We need to change something based on our knowledge.
That’s the essence of the knowing-doing gap. Two of my favorite leadership writers, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, wrote The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action. Their thesis is that knowledge alone is insufficient for change. Change requires action.
I’m not sure how you create action, but I often start with questions to prompt me to make better changes.
Prompts That Might Help Us Use the Knowing-Doing Gap
Here are some possible prompts or questions that have helped me in the past:
- Do I know the outcome(s) I want? For the writing workshops, how do I manage my sleep and food and writing?
- What other benefits will I obtain if I change?
- How can I prepare to make changes? One reason I practice writing faster is so I can take naps and still finish all the writing. I practice when I’m not at a workshop, so I can succeed better when I’m there.
These questions often work for me when I’m dealing with a personal issue.
However, if you’re faced with the knowing-doing gap at work, you might also consider these options:
- Ask context-free questions, as in When Do You Go Meta? That’s when I often discover there are people who benefit from no change. They benefit from the status quo.
- Especially when people benefit from the status quo, consider a Force Field Analysis to find ways to break that status quo.
- I’ve used causal loop diagrams in the past to see the feedback loops and delays. I can find interventions there.
Intellectual learning often matters for various problems. But, that’s not enough. We need to put that learning, that knowing into action to make change.
The question this week is: How can we use the knowing-doing gap to help us to change?