Transforming The Enterprise - 3

  Nature Of Knowledge Application

The image above shows three photos:

• Image of an Apple and an Orange sewn together (Photo source - http://www.nextnature.net/tag/hypernature/page/10/): Assumptions, mental-sets, wishful thinking, laziness and biases lead to multiple interpretations as different as Apples and Oranges for any set of facts. Such is the nature of perception among humans. It was termed Maya by the ancient Indian philosophers. Stitching together an Apple and an Orange does not create a new fruit, i.e., a single interpretation for cohesive collective action.
• Photo of a Mist (Photo source - http://www.netstate.com): Only the nearest trees are clearly visible. Much like the rapid fading of trees with distance past events lose recall as they recede in the mist of time. Also, the obvious present dominates the fuzzy future.
• Pool Photo (Photo source - http://www.britainexpress.com): The pool is bounded. Algae, if introduced, will grow rapidly till the boundaries. Thereafter, growth will be highly disproportionate to any accelerator, e.g., fertilizer. Similarly, hunger for Power, Self-interest, Desire, Defense reactions and Learning disabilities compounded by scarcity of energy and time limit appreciation of problems for collective action. Senge (1990) observed personnel live in comfort zones to cope with the huge demand on their limited resources and abilities.

The photos drawn from nature explain the nature of Knowledge.The nature in fact leads to the prevalence of a negative force in the business place among decision makers variously called irrationality or collective folly.  It creates the Knowing/Doing gap that lowers the collective ability.