I KNOW - AND SO DO YOU

Brothers and sisters, in the matters of knowing we must remember and maintain reasonable modesty. We do not know all, and in particular we do not know what is the situation where our brothers and sisters operate.

This magnificent internet era provides a possibility to watch different presentations. Also many of us hear a lot of key notes and speeches in different events. And organizations are full of inspiring executive talk and all kinds of models developed by experts in headquarters. Often the speaker and/or developer really seems to know her/his topic - which is just great. But sometimes the modesty does not seem part of picture. And as you can guess I am talking about the modesty in a very special way. What I mean with modesty here  is epistemological modesty. Epistemological modesty gives to a speaker an acute sense to understand what s/he knows - and what s/he does not know. Epistemological modesty suggest that we cannot create understanding for others, they will do it by themselves, if they choose to do so.

You see, around every person there is a kingdom of knowledge, where that person by herself/himself is the master. Let us look at the following picture. In that picture there are four main elements: 1) a person,  2) her/his kingdom of knowledge (green marks), 3) the world of daily work (the world of everyday discussions, etc.), 4) new ideas (red marks). Also there is a picture of a torch on the left, that is a symbol University of Jyväskylä and in general a symbol of understanding.

The general idea in this picture is that in our daily work we talk and handle issues which rather familiar to us. Hence the area of daily work is the easy area for us. It is the area which provides continuation to our life. When we want to learn, change and develop we often think that what we need are new ideas. That is all fine, new ideas are very important. But please take a notice, here new ideas are not yet our own ideas. We are still in a listening mode.

Hence, even more important than new ideas are those matters which are very, very close us. These matters, which belong to our kingdom of knowledge,  are such which we can really change if we just possess the understanding, knowledge, will and energy to do so. These matters can be very practical things i.e. our ways of acting in different situations, or they can relate to our understanding, values, etc.

And here lies the crux of development. We must create settings where people are willing and capable to use new ideas in their own kingdom of knowledge. You might think that this is easy and something which happens almost automatically. I dare to propose that we must not overlook these things, not personally and not when we wish to develop organizations.

So whenever we speak, no matter from which position we speak,  we have to remember the epistemological modesty. This means an attitude. "I know - and so do you". In practical terms this means that we genuinely invite people to speak their truth and share what is essential and possible in their kingdom of knowledge.

This is the route to dialogue which may provide something new to us all.

What it means to become better - as an executive

What it means to become better - as an executive

What makes you learn? What gives you the certainty that you have become better? Are you better now than what you were a year ago? The starting point here is that you are already an experienced actor, so you know what it takes to fill your position in your organization and you start to be ready for more challenging tasks. You also know where you are good if not excellent and you also know that in some areas you could be much better.

As such it is an interesting question how you would like to proceed from your current setting: do you want to be even better in the future? Probably, many of us has this kind of an stance to our existence. I would imagine that rather few like to be worse off in the future as compared the present situation by their own will. Whereas I dare to guess that there are very special individuals who by themselves feel that they have reached the high level which is possible for any human being to ever reach and thus they would like to stay where they are, but perhaps this attitude is somewhat rare (thank goodness).

But, what does it mean to be better, what is most important? Do you want to be wiser, or more efficient, or faster, or more energetic, or more caring, or what? Do you want to be better decision maker, better coach, better in presenting your arguments, or better in selling or managing sales people, or what? Or do you want to better in choosing right customers, excellent people in your team, predicting this year volumes and big events, anticipating where problems and new opportunities will emerge, do want to be better in initiating forceful action, or finding energizing vision for your organization, or what?

Also it is intriguing to think what kind of words and thinking patterns would be used if this text would belong to the wholly different realm of life than business and organizational reality. What if we would examine wheather sports enthusiastics would like to be better. I guess they certainly would like to improve their performance and we have a pretty good idea what it would mean (eg. more meters, less seconds, etc.). But what if we think for instance religious life, would people like to be better on that arena? Probably, also there the improvement in very fundamental way seems to be the goal, although it gets different forms and manifestations in different religions. Hence the desire to become better seems to be very prevalent human desire, which we can encounter in different spheres of life.

Let us zoom back to business life, and let us ask what it means to become better in that form of life? I would imagine that we might think that - of course we know the answer. Perhaps we have something in our mind and we think that it is self evident what it means to become better. However, perhaps this is one of those moments when we think that we know the answer but when we pause to think we may notice that the answer what we have in our mind is not at all self evident or that at least our answer does not cover the whole question.

In principle there are four different perspectives in evaluating whether someone is better than before:

1) Output perspective.
This is the simpliest perspective where something concrete is measured.In case someone is able to connect more pieces than before or make more phonecalls that before or do more interviews than before then s/he is better when things are estimated from this angle.

Clearly the problem here is that very rarely if ever anything like this is essential when we estime performance of an executive. Hence this level is rarely very useful. As such simple measurements do not capture the essence of the executive work and in any case quality is often much more important than quantity (eg. person makes more phonecalls in such a way that more people in the network becomes irritated - hardly an improvement).

2) Profit perspective
Here the crucial figure can be found from income statement. You might think that this solves all the problems in evaluation, because business is about profit and in case an executive is able to deliver more profit s/he becoming better. End of the story.

There is no denial that this measurument has its merits and this measument is the corner stone of modern business thinking. However, also this measurement is deficient in some important respects. For instance, any organization is part of a much larger world where everything is in the constant change. Sometimes some wave of change helps some organization to improve its results, sometimes something in the wider world makes it difficult or impossible for a certain organization to succeed, in particular when some periods are examined. Hence it can be difficult to say what part of the change in a profit figure relates to the actions taken (or not taken) by a certain executive.

3) Expert evaluation
Here the other experts evaluate performance. Clearly experts are not confined to one number or numbers in their evaluation, instead they can try to see the big picture and even the whole picture as far as it is possible for anyone. It is certain that this evaluation is actually in very wide use in the executive world. Even when officially evaluation is done on the basis of some numbers, be it a profit figure or figures from a balanced scorecard or any other metrics, even then people (experts) decide how we should read and interpret the numbers. In the business world experts use all the time their judgement in deciphering that when we can consider some performance as excellent and when as less excellent.

Also this evaluation has its challenges. Who are the experts, how they have created their knowledge base? Are they experts because they know a lot or because they fill some positions (sometimes these things are not the same). Also we may guess that sometimes experts may their own agenda which may affect to way how they exercise their judgement.

4) Self evaluation
Who knows best which particular things in your position are the real challenges and opportunities, who knows best what is difficult for you to do and what you master with ease? Clearly you are in very unique position in evaluating yourself. Old Indian proverb says that before you are able to evaluate another person walk a mile in her/his moccasin. Well, you are doing the walking.

But also self evaluation has its own pitfalls. Perhaps you are you too merciful or too harsh on yourself? Perhaps you use criterias which are not that relevant for those actors who on their part give you the resourses to act or the position to operate.

In sum what do you think when you look the path ahead. When do you will feel that you have become better, when do you know that you have become better? In any case, sunny days and enjoyable trails!