Knowledge Leadership
Last month I attended another Leaders and Legends lecture where the featured speaker was (John) Chris Inglis of the NSA. Chris suggested that there are three attributes of successful organizations:
- everyone knows what the company is about — there is a common purpose and goal
- everyone understands what their personal contribution means to the organization
- the organization is able to discern changes that are taking place around it and respond or take action
It’s pretty easy to sit in our offices and believe that everyone in our organization understands their role, what the company is about and how we, as an organization, are able to get a head start on industry changes. But think about this:
“Leadership is about recasting what is possible and appropriate.” — John Chris Inglis
Michelangelo's Pieta from http://commons.wikimedia.org
Michelangelo is central to so many of the topics of Chris’s talk because he was not just a leader but an innovator. Time and time again the individuals who make the most difference in how we embrace solutions are those that have tried them out on their own. What is so interesting about Michelangelo is that he understood the business of his line of work. While he was innovative, he was limited by his ideas around how marble could be mined, transported and turned into amazing pieces of art. As Chris Inglis suggests, it is really about the risks you can afford to take and strategies that exist within your organization.
A central theme of Chris’s talk focused on information — not only information brought into the company, but information capital of employees. And this is great connection to a case presentation my team is working on this week about knowledge management. Although he did not utter the phrase, I believe Chris Inglis was talking how organizations think strategically about business knowledge when he explored topics such as organizational resources and change management. Ultimately, leadership (and success in business) comes down to how employees are engaged in the vision of the organization AND what kind of knowledge infrastructure is in place to support transfer of knowledge across all members of the company.
