Business leaders should harness the mindset of employees because growth emanates from how people think. The pandemic reveals how businesses responded to a crisis. Companies that immediately come up with pragmatic solutions provided by their business leaders and employees have thrived amidst the recession.
On the other hand, companies that were not able to decide quickly have acquired unrealized costs. To avoid these mistakes in your business, you need to understand what kind of thinking you need to address a challenge.
2000 years ago, Aristotle found out that different knowledge can affect how individuals solve one’s problem. Here are the three realms that will help us understand how people can contribute given their specific knowledge:
Techne
If you desire to innovate, techne is being used. It is a realm that pertains to craft knowledge. You learn tools and methods to develop something new.
In a company, this type of knowledge can be executed mostly under the Information Technology department. With the advancement of technologies, businesses should know what they need to attain for them to generate more business opportunities.
Episteme
Episteme refers to scientific knowledge. They use the law of nature and absolute facts to address problems.
Phronesis
Phronesis is a type of knowledge that refers to ethical judgment. If there are competing values when creating decisions, perspective-taking, and wisdom are needed. With this knowledge, you can analyze trade-offs and other possibilities that will come in the future.
How are these types of knowledge impactful to an organization? Simple, if you are a business leader, it is easier for you to delegate the problems to solve to a particular group depending on their realm of knowledge. You can only do this when you determine the strengths of your people.
When you have problems with your operations, people who have innovative minds can handle it. If you have an optimization problem, epistemic people can resolve it. And lastly, if you want to create strategic work plans, the realm of phronesis will help you with that.
Knowing all of these realms is not what the business leaders should only discover, but most importantly to make sure that the right realms are being gathered to carry out what problems to solve.
Respectively, as a business leader, you should also harness your understanding of the nature of the problem before delegating to your people. Keep in mind that business disruption starts when everyone starts to solve a problem the way they wanted it to be without taking into account the impact of practicality.
