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Leaders Need to Harness Aristotle’s 3 Types of Knowledge
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Improving your leadership capability
A critical skill for leaders is the ability to figure out what kind of thinking is necessary to address a given challenge.
The wrong kind of thinking about a problem happens all the time because different types of effort require different types of knowledge. For example, you may analyze scientific data when a values-informed judgment call is needed, or you'll trust your instincts where a data analysis would expose your faulty thinking.
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Solving different types of problems
Aristotle outlined distinct types of knowledge required to solve problems in three realms.
- Techne was craft knowledge: learning to use tools and methods to create something, such as a farmer designing an irrigation system.
- Episteme was scientific knowledge: discovering the laws of nature. An astronomer contemplating why galaxies turn the way they do will fall in this realm.
- Phronesis was similar to ethical judgment: The perspective-taking and wisdom required to make decisions when there are multiple possible answers. For example, a policymaker deciding how to allocate limited funds.
Aristotle outlined these three kinds of knowledge because they require different styles of thinking. If you have a phronetic problem to solve, don't use an epistemic thinker.
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Recognize which thinking is needed
Most leaders haven't thought much about the realms of knowledge and what problems they can solve. If you're a leader of a large corporation with challenges in all three of these realms, it's a big part of your job to ensure the right kinds of thinking are used and in which situation it is required.
That means you should be able to recognize which mode of thinking is the best fit for a given problem, and which people are able to best deal with it.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Measuring Employee Productivity
Fixing employee productivity in the industrial age, when most workers were handling machinery and it’s parts, was a tedious but doable process. The managers had to fix the people who were making mi...
The Old Productivity Formula
The basic productivity formula(productivity= output divided by input) worked well in the industrial age as the output and input were clearly defined and measurable.
Today’s leaders need innovative solutions to measure and improve productivity in a knowledge-based workplace, as the measurement of output and input is not what it was.
Quality And Quantity
While assigning value to the output of knowledge workers, we cannot simply measure the output like before.
Coders and doctors cannot be measured by the hour, as their output is not uniform or consistent every hour.
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Why progress studies are important
- We still need a lot of progress for major challenges. We haven't yet cured all diseases; we don't yet know how to solve climate change; we don't yet understa...
Benefiting from an organized effort
The world would benefit from an organized effort from various disciplines to understand:
- How we should identify and train brilliant young people.
- How the most effective small groups exchange and share ideas.
- Which incentives should exist for participants in innovative ecosystems (scientists, entrepreneurs, managers, and engineers)
- How much organizations differ in productivity. One recent study found that teaching better management practices to firms in Italy improved productivity by 49 percent over 15 years compared with peer firms that didn’t receive the training.
- How scientists should be selected and funded. A recent paper concluded that long-term grants to high-potential scientists made those scientists 96 percent more likely to produce breakthrough work.
Progress Studies antecedents
- The Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University tried to encourage optimistic thinking about the future through fiction and narrative.
- An applied history movement is needed to help draw lessons from history and apply them to real-world problems.
- In a world with Progress Studies, a new focus on progress belongs to a school of thought that would encourage a decentralized shift in priorities among academics, philanthropists, and funding agencies. This has already happened in climate-science research and the designation of Keynesian economics, which helped economists focus on fiscal policy as a tool for recession fighting.
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Believing That Being Wrong Is a Failure
The best way to know what works and what doesn’t, is to fail a few times.
Smart people don’t fear being wrong because they know that being wrong is ultimately an instrument that pushes...
Thinking That Everything Is About You
Many of us obsess over “rejections” and ruminate on what we could have done differently. It’s more productive to realize that every disappointment or poor interaction is not actually about us.
Successful people realize that every little thing – bad or good – is not a reflection of them or their self-worth.
Being E-Ready Every Minute of the Day
Smart people know that having a fulfilling life means having a life outside of work. And they make time for it. Obsessively checking work email at the dinner table is a good recipe for disaster.
Set some time where your phone is off, and your attention is on the people right in front of you.