Wisdom and creativity are more and more important in any organization. Successful organizations must change, they must develop, they must create new, they must become more and more effective. This all requires thinking, new ideas. Old routines won't help too long.
This constant development requires that someone proposes new ideas. Have you noticed that when your position in organization has risen that also your ideas have become better and better? Hence you must have become wiser? How do you know that your wisdom has increased? Well to most of us people around us tell the message. Hence perhaps you have noticed that recently people are more prone to comment that the point which you raise is relevant, and quite often people around you make the idea which you have suggested as a point of departure when they start new action.
This is just great. And point here is not to doubt your wisdom. However, I think that in the future you could be even wiser if you would take a moment of your time and consider what power-knowledge thinking could mean in your environment when you do your leadership work and we you build future success to your organization..
We can thank Michel Foucault of taking up the power-knowledge thinking. The message is that power and knowledge are tightly linked and when someone has power he also tend to have a lot to say what is considered as knowledge. Clearly the knowledge is created in a discourse to which people participate. However, people are very sensitive in finding out what is their role in any discourse. People are clever to find out who is supposed to say what in certain situation. By the way this cleverness of accepting certain tight role is not clever at all as such, instead it hugely reduces what people could achieve together, if all would participate fully to any discussion.
Hence as a leader you will have a special role in the complex process where people in your organization find out what is wise, who can propose new wisdom and how we can develop our organization. How should you proceed in this situation and how could you be even wiser in the future. I propose here some points which you could consider:
1) From now on power-knowledge concept is one of your thinking tool when you plan and encounter different situations. This thinking tool may be relevant in everything starting from practical arrangements in any meeting, and stretching to the way you create space and motivation for all to participate.
2) In fact, you could try regularly create settings where you breach the rules of typical discourse. Perhaps you create special innovation meeting where all the participants have as much time to express their views, or you create other arrangements which helps all the participants to say their views.
3) You could also start to champion a new thinking where the ability to produce new wisdom is seen as a shared effort, where the quality and also the frequency of communication between people is the most important element in creating new wisdom.
I would suggest that this discussion about the rules and about the changing of rules of any discourse is very important right now. I would also propose that it is crucial to see how much any organization could benefit from the active participation and sharing of views and ideas. Transparency and sharing start to be the sign of wisdom in organization.
This is because we live now a moment when best organizations equip their key personnel with latest technology (like ipad's and corresponding). These equipment are most important. At the same it is important that people really learn to use the vast possibilities of those new equipment. And it may be even more important that we create new rules of discourse and sharing and we start to create wisdom together.
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