Wanted: Better Leadership and Knowledge Transfer
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Top Leadership Qualities
Focus on results: 85%, Teamwork: 82%, Collaboration: 78%, Listening: 77%, Strategic planning: 77% -
Game-Changer
79% of professionals agreed that current business challenges require adjustments in leadership style. -
Inflexible Inclination
66% of them agreed that today's leaders are resistant to changing their style. -
Lacking Merit
Just 28% agreed that compensation in their organization is based on performance. -
Scant Scouting
Only 26% agreed that succession planning involves mapping out individuals who are prepared to move into leadership roles. -
Training Deficit
Only 27% agreed that employees who are considered potential future leaders take part in formal leadership development programs. -
Define Critical Knowledge
Nearly two out of five businesses said they do not have criteria to identify or prioritize critical knowledge, leading to haphazard approaches. -
Assess Knowledge-Transfer Platforms
Top performers use criteria to decide whether to pass along knowledge systemically (such as mentor to mentee) or organically through collaboration tools. -
Make the Time
Set aside designated times for knowledge-transfer sessions that have clear goals, milestones and outcomes. Otherwise, sessions could get lost in the daily shuffle. -
Offer Self-Service
Employees can best navigate, filter and customize knowledge flows with blogs, communities of practice, webinars, etc., along with search tools and alerts to help sort through the clutter.
Two drivers of organizational success are the need for leadership methods that respond to today's brisk pace of business and the demand to more readily transfer knowledge within an enterprise, according to recent research from the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC), a nonprofit that specializes in benchmarking and best-practices research. The research, the result of two separate studies, clearly demonstrates that companies that stubbornly cling to traditional practices because "that's the way we've always done it" risk losing their ability to compete successfully. For example, while employees feel that the best leaders are those who focus on results, only a minority of survey participants say that compensation is tied to performance. Meanwhile, the vast majority say their managers are reluctant to change their leadership styles, even though such adaptability is critical. The research also reveals that leaders need to get smarter about knowledge transfer, as most organizations aren't even identifying the critical knowledge that must be passed along. More than 500 professionals took part in the leadership research, which was sponsored by THEaster Consulting; 14 organizations participated in the knowledge-transfer study, for which KPMG served as primary research partner.