Strategic Thinking 3: Application in a Knowledge Enterprise

Comprehension. Understanding. Not the mere ability to correctly say the current buzzwords in the appropriate context. True understanding.

Comprehension is the ability to take meaning and own it well enough to return it or pass it on.

Application is putting that meaning into practice. It’s where the rubber meets the road. It happens daily all arounds us, formally and informally; at school, at work, in our homes; one-to-one, in meetings, even when we’re alone. It’s a response of one’s own understanding to a real-life situation. Application is the actual use or passing on of knowledge.

If that knowledge enterprise using Bloom’s Taxonomy, that I discussed in Strategic Thinking 1 and 2, has reached Comprehension, then the next step, Application, is seamless. It happens in some manner for the product to be sold. The key shareholders in the development blog now work as a team to present the product to a larger group.

The benefits of this purposely, scaffolded system based on Bloom’s taxonomy become exponentially visible. The effort has positive effects in two directions–for those who are being introduced to the product AND for those who have been part of the development all along.

Benefits to the Development Team

The development team comes to a deeper understanding of the product and interdepartmental needs as they work as a heterogenous group to state the core values in a language that they can take back to the larger group.

• Finding the language to use that works across the larger group moves the team to organize their thinking and explain their ideas.
• Putting together presentations leads them to restate, critique, classify, summarize, translate, and discuss concepts, they assumed they already knew.
• The team grows interdepartmental respect, cooperation, and interpersonal skills that build identity and stregthens the core competencies of the enterprise.

The main difference here is that the knowledge enterprise team starts with a shared base of knowledge and comprehension that can’t be bridged in the traditional, informational meetings in which planners have updated key shareholders on the progress or completion of a plan.

Benefits to the Larger Group

The larger group also gains from the deeper understanding of the heterogenous team with the shared based of knowledge and comprehension.

• Deeper comprehension on the part of the key shareholders means that the larger group gets a clearer definition of the product from the start. That means their knowledge step is fuller, deeper than it ever possibly could have been.
• The larger group has a wider resource to lean on for advice and counsel when question arise. The issue of buzz words and a few gurus within the enterprise falls away to a larger group of key shareholders who actually know and understand the whys and hows.
• The larger group grows in confidence in their own ability and the strength of the enterprise. They have the benefit of actual knowledge and support to gain comprehension so that they, too, can confidently execute their jobs.

The main difference here is that knowledge enterprise has supplied the larger group with a depth of knowledge and a interdepartmental team of folks who can see the product from the inside out AND the outside–rather than an overview and folks who can only see the product from what they must do with it.

Imagine how each of those employees would be able to talk to customers–inside the enterprise and out.

Liz Strauss