6 Things Leaders Need to know to Grow Wisdom in Business Organisations

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Abstract

s of wisdom, which is a core tacit knowledge asset resident in the human talent of the organization. Replacing and restoring this lost wisdom is most difficult, daunting and well-nigh impossible.Leaders can grow wisdom in their fledgling startup ventures or mature organisations by first understanding 3 essential fundamental truths about Wisdom:1. There is no one precise definition of wisdom. It is a multi-dimensional construct around the idea of goodness, cognitive diagnosis, strategic insight, intellectual development, competency excellence, management foresight and experience.2. Wisdom is a unique human talent process. It can be regarded as a concurrent series of processes which overlap understandings to forge an awesomely indescribable alchemy of human action in accordance with underlying principles that earn eternal admiration by peers and future generations to be the gold standard of a completely desirable satisfying and fulfilling human existence. It is not, and should not be confused with a human capability. Neither can human wisdom be medically cloned or programmed in robots or machines.3. The dimensions of wisdom from various relevant literature include being practical, reflexive, experiential, ethically sensitive, respectful of diversity, socially interactive, bold, unconventional, innovative and empowered by a readiness to learn from uncertainty and be emboldened to live comfortably with ambiguity.Leaders can then proceed to create, nurture and grow wisdom in their organisations because wisdom can be constructed to obtain learning outcomes in the form of changed behaviors which are observable and measured. They must be mindful of the following 6 things about wisdom creation deployed through a natural social-psychological sense-making process.1) Learning and growing wisdom is essentially a sense-making process. The learning outcome of wisdom is action-based — powerful, wise and impactful action. Wisdom development is designed as pathways to learning and thinking towards impactful action that is sustainable and socially responsible.2) Wisdom develops as we make sense of life after participating in an event or situation. Through discussion with others and subsequent explanations, we then construct the meanings of our experiences. Sense-making thereby creates “new” realities in a better understanding, and for a “better” wisdom.<p id=

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"f211">3) Wisdom is sense-making in action. Great judgement, best competent decisions and creative problem-solving are the results of the interplay of thinking, learning and development which shape cognition and the cognitive development of wisdom. We already know that people learn best through their own activity; that sensory experience is basic to learning; and that effective learning is holistic, interdisciplinary, and specific.4) Learning wisdom is fundamentally a social activity. People construct their knowledge, not merely from direct personal experience, but also from feedback or being told by others and by being shaped through social experience and interaction. The construction of wisdom is therefore not viable or feasible in social isolation, but is co-constructive in essence within the reality of the social and cultural space.5) The development of wisdom begins with experience. Learning is essentially the determination of meaning out of an experiential encounter with real situations. The meaning derived would be the result of the interplay between what the person brings to the experiential situation and what actually happens there. A person works on every new experience to “make sense” of it. He uses the knowledge or meaning derived from previous experience to work on the new experience so as to create and invent a “new” purposeful sense.6) Experience by itself is however not learning. Wisdom learning requires reflections and “making sense” in relation to some referents. The basic idea of sense-making is that reality is constructed through an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs. Sense-making is simply “how people make sense out of their experience in the world” (Duffy, 1995). The most important lesson in cultivating wisdom from experience is not what has happened, but what the happening means for the happiness of others and oneself.Leaders who attain sense-making self-mastery in their personal development will discover that wisdom frames its own question, and brings sense-making to bear for the final answers. Through thinking the unthinkable, predicting the improbable, anticipating the improbable, visioning the unimaginable, wisdom then asks the impossible question(s); and wisdom answers its own questions that we do not yet know how to ask, concerning objects or issues that we have not yet envisaged. Enjoy your wisdom journey.</article></body>

6 Things Leaders Need to know to Grow Wisdom in Business Organisations

Startup entrepreneurs can benefit from what business leaders understand now to be continuous uncertainties and ambiguities in the operational space between the present here and distant there in the future, and where the only viable strategic responses are agility and flexibility. For leaders striving to stay ahead of the performance survival curve, the most effective strategic management tool is human wisdom, defined simply as that boundless synergy of human cognitive, reflective and affective abilities.

Lacking organisational wisdom, strategic failures abounded over the past 3 decades: corporate Goliaths fell; “body-less” Cyber-tech companies become profitable and popular; conventional corporate strategies are turned on their heads; legacy core strengths transformed overnight into weaknesses; intense “red ocean” competitions turns bloody; “blue oceans” quickly became pinkish, then bruised purple before turning red again. Old fashioned but comfortable ideas never seemed to leave the corporate ball park.

Engaging the confluence of timing, context and capability to occupy strategic space requires wisdom. The leadership failure to create, nurture and grow wisdom in its human talents and embed such wisdom in its organizations is the single greatest failure of leadership. This has grave implications for personal leadership development as well as entrepreneurship training and business venture creation.

The knowledge economy has replaced robot-like manufacturing workers with relationship workers in the fast-growing service industries. Leaders, managers and workers alike are expected to anticipate and deliver consistent excellent services within an increasingly narrower 6-sigma band. Globally, technological innovation like 5G, blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics in mobility and communications also rapidly accelerates the tsunamic digital transformation of the workplace and marketplace, empowering the multiplication of social networks between peers, between strangers and between business2consumers/businesses (B2C/B2B).

As human talents are laid off by the thousands in traditional responses to economic downturns, it also triggered a deeper talent management crisis through the consequential loss of wisdom, which is a core tacit knowledge asset resident in the human talent of the organization. Replacing and restoring this lost wisdom is most difficult, daunting and well-nigh impossible.

Leaders can grow wisdom in their fledgling startup ventures or mature organisations by first understanding 3 essential fundamental truths about Wisdom:

1. There is no one precise definition of wisdom. It is a multi-dimensional construct around the idea of goodness, cognitive diagnosis, strategic insight, intellectual development, competency excellence, management foresight and experience.

2. Wisdom is a unique human talent process. It can be regarded as a concurrent series of processes which overlap understandings to forge an awesomely indescribable alchemy of human action in accordance with underlying principles that earn eternal admiration by peers and future generations to be the gold standard of a completely desirable satisfying and fulfilling human existence. It is not, and should not be confused with a human capability. Neither can human wisdom be medically cloned or programmed in robots or machines.

3. The dimensions of wisdom from various relevant literature include being practical, reflexive, experiential, ethically sensitive, respectful of diversity, socially interactive, bold, unconventional, innovative and empowered by a readiness to learn from uncertainty and be emboldened to live comfortably with ambiguity.

Leaders can then proceed to create, nurture and grow wisdom in their organisations because wisdom can be constructed to obtain learning outcomes in the form of changed behaviors which are observable and measured. They must be mindful of the following 6 things about wisdom creation deployed through a natural social-psychological sense-making process.

1) Learning and growing wisdom is essentially a sense-making process. The learning outcome of wisdom is action-based — powerful, wise and impactful action. Wisdom development is designed as pathways to learning and thinking towards impactful action that is sustainable and socially responsible.

2) Wisdom develops as we make sense of life after participating in an event or situation. Through discussion with others and subsequent explanations, we then construct the meanings of our experiences. Sense-making thereby creates “new” realities in a better understanding, and for a “better” wisdom.

3) Wisdom is sense-making in action. Great judgement, best competent decisions and creative problem-solving are the results of the interplay of thinking, learning and development which shape cognition and the cognitive development of wisdom. We already know that people learn best through their own activity; that sensory experience is basic to learning; and that effective learning is holistic, interdisciplinary, and specific.

4) Learning wisdom is fundamentally a social activity. People construct their knowledge, not merely from direct personal experience, but also from feedback or being told by others and by being shaped through social experience and interaction. The construction of wisdom is therefore not viable or feasible in social isolation, but is co-constructive in essence within the reality of the social and cultural space.

5) The development of wisdom begins with experience. Learning is essentially the determination of meaning out of an experiential encounter with real situations. The meaning derived would be the result of the interplay between what the person brings to the experiential situation and what actually happens there. A person works on every new experience to “make sense” of it. He uses the knowledge or meaning derived from previous experience to work on the new experience so as to create and invent a “new” purposeful sense.

6) Experience by itself is however not learning. Wisdom learning requires reflections and “making sense” in relation to some referents. The basic idea of sense-making is that reality is constructed through an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs. Sense-making is simply “how people make sense out of their experience in the world” (Duffy, 1995). The most important lesson in cultivating wisdom from experience is not what has happened, but what the happening means for the happiness of others and oneself.

Leaders who attain sense-making self-mastery in their personal development will discover that wisdom frames its own question, and brings sense-making to bear for the final answers. Through thinking the unthinkable, predicting the improbable, anticipating the improbable, visioning the unimaginable, wisdom then asks the impossible question(s); and wisdom answers its own questions that we do not yet know how to ask, concerning objects or issues that we have not yet envisaged. Enjoy your wisdom journey.