Power is a leadership tool that should be used to enhance the knowledge-processing capacity of the organization.
Martin & Marion, 2005, p. 149 (article link)
In my dissertation research, I studied the flow of information and influence within undergraduate STEM departments where faculty were interested in moving to more learner-centered teaching approaches. (I am almost able to share the ProQuest link – will add when it’s live.)
My research shows that faculty hold more power in the middle than they may realize – they are integral partners to the vital leadership work of information flow and processing new ideas into the organization’s cultural repository.
Some background on how ideas flow through organizations and why you should care
At a deep level, organizations run on how quickly good ideas can disseminate through people (teams, departments, individuals) and be adopted. Anytime something goes wrong or a challenge emerges, people begin working to solve it – this process could be formal or informal, quiet or shouted from the rooftops.
What matters, according to the authors of one of the foundational theories to my research (McElroy & Firestone), is that this Knowledge Life Cycle (their term) does run at every level of an organization. Whether yours is functional or broken can have a huge impact on how well an organization is able to respond to threats and challenges and new problems.
Martin and Marion did the first research into how this concept might be applied to higher education institutions by studying the various roles that top leaders play in shaping the KLC of their institution. The researchers settled on six roles that a leader plays to facilitate an open and helpful flow of knowledge throughout an organization at all levels.
See, leaders can’t actually put their hands on this Knowledge Life Cycle process. They can’t force people to come up with new ideas or implement them. (Well, leaders can force implementation to a point, but they definitely can’t make people “like” it or remember to care.) What leaders can do is build an environment which encourages everyone to own the problems that emerge in their areas and disseminate that knowledge quickly and helpfully across the organization (as appropriate).
Leaders can and should build an organizational environment that upholds the cultural values they want to see. They should (in the words of Jim Collins, Good to Great) put the right people in the right seats on the “bus” to create healthy departments. And they can take specific steps to improve the flow of crucial problem-solving knowledge and solutions across their whole organization.
The idea here is not that individuals can fix any organizational mess simply by “knowing things.” Rather, it is to acknowledge that learning (ideas, processes, skills, data, etc) is foundational to solving any problem, and the most effective solutions arise out of humans working together in an environment of transparency, good information flow, and safety. I am using “knowledge” loosely as a term for what we need to know or be able to do in order to accomplish the work of the organization.
Leadership roles in organizational information flow
According to Martin and Marion, there are six key roles for leaders. I will discuss each of these.
Environment manager
Leaders need to break negative patterns of behavior and replace them with new methods of solving problems, identifying the gaps in organizational knowledge that are causing challenges, and create the kind of workplace where people feel safe to speak up about problems. (LJR: My study of leadership and my work experience lead me to believe that this role is one of the most crucial for leadership, as it is nearly impossible for people outside of the power structure to change the environment in significant ways, outside of perhaps large-scale solidarity movements.)
Network manager
People exist within social networks in every organization. Complexity Theory provides key insights into how many organizational behaviors are emergent from the relationships that exist between employees. It is the job of the leader to ensure networks within the organization are healthy and broad enough to enable information to flow among departments. Martin and Marion write, “The strength of organizational networks is much larger than individual relationships; it is a collusion of multiple roles and expertise bound together to … enable creative thinking and [strengthen] collaboration and knowledge processing networks” (Martin & Marion, 2005, p. 144).
Policy manager
Here is where the leader’s power is most obvious: policy decisions are often under the purview of leadership, thus leaders are ultimately responsible to ensure that the organization benefits from clear guidance that empowers individuals to identify a problem and start finding solutions, and then to share that solution so it’s beneficial to the entire organization. Likewise, leaders need to break down clunky bureaucratic processes that inhibit people from taking action rapidly in the face of big problems. Nobody said this would be easy, but a healthy environment for knowledge and problem solving is usually one where people aren’t so boxed in that they can’t interact with others across the entire organization.
Crisis manager
We learn the most after something really breaks. Leaders must initially manage crises to get things back on track, but they must also take the opportunity to break apart processes and internal structures that led to problems blowing up instead of being recognized and solved. Repeated crises may be a symptom of a deeply dysfunctional knowledge life cycle — problems are not being recognized, or people do not feel empowered to attempt to solve them, or individuals are too afraid to speak up and identify challenges.
Knowledge gap identifier
This is perhaps my favorite of the six roles, personally, as I often find myself taking on this work naturally within any organization I’m part of. (My research shows that some of these roles, including this one, should be inhabited by front-line employees as much as they are by the leader.) Martin and Marion write, “The ability to identify knowledge gaps is a critical leadership skill.” Ideally, many people in the organization are seeing gaps in the organization’s abilities or information and bringing those to light for solution, but it is absolutely on the shoulders of the leader to make herself aware of what’s happening across all levels.
Future leader preparation
Leaders must be role models of the behaviors that will lead to an open environment where people feel safe to point out problems and work together to solve them. (Ron Heifetz’s books on Adaptive Leadership Theory are very helpful here.) But no one person can conquer this task alone. Leaders must be part of mentoring promising leadership candidates and ensuring that everyone, especially potential leaders, knows of the importance of knowledge processing for the health and success of the organization.
What you can do with this theory
I love finding practical theory and thinking about how I might apply it in my role or imagine how I would lead a team in light of what I’ve learned. I find the Knowledge Life Cycle to be an interesting way to approach visualizing the way an organization is empowered to solve problems for itself.
Some “problems” are tiny and personal. YOU have your own knowledge cycle; you knock it into gear every time you realize you’re going to need to change something about how you work to make things run more smoothly or in response to a change in your environment.
Individually, I try to run a “stop / start / continue” exercise for my personal practices at work every 6-12 months. I have often abandoned tasks I had created for myself “to be helpful” or “to stay organized” which ended up costing me more time than they were worth. Ultimately, the knowledge life cycle is about recognizing a gap, testing solutions, and picking the “best fit” for the circumstances. As things change, our practices often need to be updated.
Every level of an organization has its own KLC: individuals, the teams they work with, departments, large business units, and the organization as a whole. Anyone who aspires to be a leader should begin honing their ability to recognize a healthy knowledge cycle vs a dysfunctional one.
Application to higher education
For faculty in higher education, my research suggests that faculty inhabit three of these roles at times, at least in their own departments: environment manager, network manager, and knowledge gap identifier. (Deans or department heads, should take on all 6 roles as core to their work.) Frontline faculty, even brand new folks early in their career, are integral to building a healthy departmental environment where people model recognizing challenges, speaking up about what they see, and sharing ideas — what they’ve tried, what’s worked or not worked.
Likewise, faculty can and should work to build strong social connections within their departments and beyond, reaching across the university to get to know a variety of faculty and staff partners who can be instrumental in solving instructional problems. While it’s true that, say, chemistry professors are not going to ask someone in the history department how to teach labs, all professors are educators at the core, and students benefit from faculty who are trained in instructional techniques and supported by their peers in learning and growing as teachers.
Every employee can and should recognize knowledge gaps in the processes they encounter every day. I should clarify that a “knowledge gap” isn’t some fancy event — you hit a knowledge gap whenever you realize a process has broken down, or a new challenge has emerged, or a problem isn’t going to be solved via some off-the-shelf simple fix. Who is best positioned to see these emergent challenges? The people who do the work of the organization!
Resources you can use
I’d like to conclude by recommending some good reads.
For more on higher education, read the article by Martin and Marion which I’ve linked here. It’s not long, and it’s a helpful model for strengthening higher education institutions.
Of course, I’d love for people to read chapter 2 or chapter 5 in my dissertation if you want to think more about how faculty participate in the knowledge life cycles of their departments and institutions.
For the foundational theory, check out this book:
- McElroy, M. W. (2003). The new knowledge management: Complexity, learning, and sustainable innovation. KMCI Press. You can get a used copy for $1 or two on Amazon (my affiliate link to the book).
Lori's Notes 