The Knowing-Doing Gap

8	Turning Knowledgeinto Action

WE HAVE SEEN THAT THE knowing-doing gap is a pervasive and important problem. Organizational performance often depends more on how skilled managers are at turning knowledge into action than on knowing the right thing to do. Knowledge and information are obviously crucial to performance. But we now live in a world where knowledge transfer and information exchange are tremendously efficient, and where there are numerous organizations in the business of collecting and transferring best practices. So, there are fewer and smaller differences in what firms know than in their ability to act on that knowledge. It is widely recognized that many firms have gaps between what they know and what they do, but the causes ...