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The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action
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by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
Sales Rank: 12299
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List Price: $32.50
$21.45
At Amazon
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Hardcover: 314 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press; 1 edition January 15, 2000
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1578511240
ISBN-13: 978-1578511242
Product Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
Product Review
Every year, companies spend billions of dollars on training programs and management consultants, searching for ways to improve. But it's mostly all talk and no action, according to Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, authors of The Knowing-Doing Gap. "Did you ever wonder why so much education and training, management consultation, organizational research and so many books and articles produce so few changes in actual management practice?" ask Stanford University professors Pfeffer and Sutton. "We wondered, too, and so we embarked on a quest to explore one of the great mysteries in organizational management: why knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fails to result in action or behavior consistent with that knowledge." The authors describe the most common obstacles to action---such as fear and inertia---and profile successful companies that overcome them.
Among the companies that Pfeffer and Sutton say do it right: General Electric, the Men's Wearhouse, SAS Institute, Southwest Airlines, Toyota, and British Petroleum. The book, based on four years of research, is broken into chapters with titles such as "When Talk Substitutes for Action," "When Fear Prevents Acting on Knowledge," "When Internal Competition Turns Friends into Enemies," and "Turning Knowledge into Action." Each chapter contains tips on what to do and what to avoid, and provides examples of how a lethargic company culture can be transformed. The Knowing-Doing Gap is a useful how-to guide for managers looking to make changes. Yet, as Pfeffer and Sutton point out, it takes more than reading their book or discussing their recommendations. It takes action. --Dan Ring
National Productivity Review, Winter 1999
"This volume will quickly assume a place among the classic, frequently cited managment books."
Customer Reviews & Comments
With few exceptions, the most valuable business books are those in which their authors share the results of efforts to answer especially important questions. That is certainly true of this book. As Pfeffer and Sutton explain, "We wrote this book because we wanted to understand why so managers know so much about organizational performance, say so many smart things about how to achieve performance, and work so hard, yet are trapped in firms that do so many things they know will undermine performance." Obviously, knowing what to do is not enough. Inorder to identify the causes of what they refer to as the "knowing-doing gap," Pfeffer and Sutton embarked on a four-year research project. What they learned is shared in this exceptionally informative and thus invaluable book. They organize their material within eight chapters, followed by an appendix in which they provide "The Knowing-Doing Survey." This survey of restaurant managers all by itself is worth far more than the cost of the book. The items to which participants respond can easily be modified to accommodate any other kind of business. Moreover, even in small privately-owned companies, it will enable decision-makers to measure the nature and extent of their own "knowing-doing gap." Pfeffer and Sutton correctly point out that knowing (in italics) about that gap is different from doing (in italics) something about it. "Understanding causes is helpful because such understanding can guide action. But by itself, this knowing is insufficient -- action must occur." Most executives may not be able to eliminate the gap entirely but, guided and informed by what Prefer and Sutton reveal in this book, they can at least reduce the gap. Moreover, those with supervisory responsibilities will also be able to help reduce the gap for each of those for whom they are responsible. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Sydney Finkelstein's Why Smart Executives Fail...and What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes as well as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan's Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.
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The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action
List Price: $32.50
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Price: $21.45
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