I guess it is understandable that most businesses tend to concentrate on the real, the tangible and the known. It is called focus. I would be the last to challenge this basic business ingredient, yet does the known not co-exist with the unknown? The concepts are surely not mutually exclusive - It is not an either or situation!
Experience shows us on a daily basis that overcoming reluctance to work with what might happen in the future seems to be the greatest client challenge in building healthy knowledge management awareness. Overworked decision-makers just do not seem to have the time to consider uncertainty: “Bring me proof’ or “When it has been seen to work I will consider it…†are mentioned with alarming frequency. From the top down this approach stunts organizational capacity to factor in instinct, intuition and gut-feelings, that to my mind are innate human strengths. Even Risk Management has become an absolute science, and, to my mind, is often discussed as elimination rather than management of risk. Is this possible?
The more we in the Western World advance on technical, scientific, industrial and medical levels etc., the less we rely on what have ironically become loosely termed as touchy/feely attributes. In the quest for certainty are we not excising a huge chunk of human business capacity that will ultimately erode the desire/ability to think about (and trust) unproven concepts, intangibles and even innovative ideas? Think how many creators, inventors and innovators go to their grave without reward – Neither proof, recognition nor acceptance arriving soon enough.
During the Tsunami disaster of 2004, multitudes of so-called primitive people and animals all headed for the high ground before disaster struck, trusting instinct alone. Do we not all have this ability? What benefit would a business have if it, in good time, harnessed, processed and acted on individual/team instinct?
Laurens van der Post, a forward thinker of the last century, in his book Venture into the Interior†discussing this very topic said:
“…against all my training and upbringing, I have become increasingly aware of how little our conscious knowing pushes back the frontiers of our unknowing…In the forefront of our century all this parade of our knowledge, this great and glittering collection of demonstrable and ascertainable fact, throws no more light on our aboriginal darkness…a way of knowing which is underneath and above consciousness of knowing…the acceptance (of this) keeps me humble…prevents me, as we used to say in the recent war (WWII), from being caught too far out of positionâ€
True foreknowledge or Intelligence Awareness lies in this realm – The advantages gained by governments and militarists trained to rely on real Intelligence is beyond dispute. Why then do we have such a hard time doing the same in business?
Rodger Nevill Harding
Toronto, February 2007