‘Deep smarts’ means something more than simply intelligence or knowledge. Leonard and Swap use the term to refer to expertise in the form of practical wisdom. Deep smarts are the accumulated knowledge, know-how, and intuition gained through extensive experience that form the engine of the organization, and provide the foundation for individual success. Deep smarts integrate a system-level view derived from experience and expertise in specific areas. In this book, the authors explain why managers should take the trouble to understand the nature of deep smarts, how to cultivate them, and how to transfer them from one person to another.
Leonard and Swap believe that managers are overlooking deep smarts. They should not rely on technology alone, since it cannot adequately capture and transfer this expertise. Fundamental to the book is the view that not all knowledge is created equal. Managers need to understand how various types of experience differ, only some types creating deep smarts. They aim their book at general managers who want to improve their ability to invest effectively in organizational learning and human capital, as well as functional managers, especially those responsible for knowledge domains that create competitive advantage.
The authors base their conclusions on a multiyear research project in which they interviewed entrepreneurs and coaches in 35 companies in the U.S., Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and China. The coaches were either venture capitalists, mentor capitalists (wealthy, cashed-out individuals), or managers in incubators. They checked their observations by conducting several case studies in large, established companies.
Leaders should devote themselves to cultivating and managing deep smarts, since they are vital to organizational viability and innovation. This is no easy task because of the complex nature of deep smarts, which the authors characterize as “the ability to comprehend complex, interactive relationships and make swift, expert decisions based on that system level of comprehension but also the ability, when necessary, to dive into the component parts of that system and understand the details.” (For a different take, I recommend Gary Klein’s Sources of Power, in which he analyzes in detail the kind of instantaneous and accurate intuition grounded in long experience.)
How exactly do you set about cultivating and managing deep smarts? The bad news: You cannot rush the progression from novice to apprentice to journeyman to master. According to The Ten Year Rule, becoming an expert requires at least ten years of concentrated study and practice. Organizations do themselves no favors when they ignore or downplay the real limitations on how fast they can develop expertise. Although deep smarts take time to grow, improving your cultivation methods can compress the time to some degree.
Practical management of deep smarts, argue Leonard and Swap, begins with understanding. Most of the book is informed by considering the distinction between internal and external influences on deep smarts, and that between acquiring and shaping deep smarts. While the challenges of acquiring this form of expertise may be relatively obvious, the authors believe that we are less aware of how it is shaped by factors that frame and filter knowledge. The book begins by discussing knowledge building and concludes by discussing knowledge transfer. Managers may be tempted to ignore the middle of the sandwich (chapters 5 & 6), devoted to issues of framing and filtering.
After explaining how certain types of sustained experience can build deep smarts, the book moves on to examine the nature of expertise. Experts distinguish themselves in a number of ways: They recognize bear traps, make decisions swiftly, recognize context, extrapolate, make fine distinctions, recognize the limits of their knowledge and know when the rules don’t apply.
The next chapter explains three models for assembling deep smarts: Plug and play; plug, modify and play; and creative fusion. These models vary in terms of how readily the components can be merged or modified, how the interfaces between the components must be managed, and where deep smarts come into play. Apart from this chapter, the book focuses on developing rather than assembling deep smarts. Interesting work in the area of assembling expert knowledge has been done in the areas of expert location systems, and knowledge markets. (A good source is “Bringing the Market Inside.”)
After considering how deep smarts are shaped by personal, organizational, and cultural belief systems (chapter 5), as well as by social influences (chapter 6), Leonard and Swap turn to the question of how to transfer deep smarts. (You can find this material independently in “The Knowledge Coach”, also reviewed on ManyWorlds.com.) Chapter 7 outlines the various modes of knowledge transfer, from more passive reception to more active learning: Directives, presentations and lectures; rules of thumb; stories with a moral; Socratic questioning; and learning by doing (guided experience). The following chapter explains how knowledge coaches can facilitate the transfer of this form of expertise through four modes of guided experience: guided practice, guided observation, guided problem-solving, and guided experimentation. The authors especially recommend the last three methods for fostering skills in innovating.
The book concludes by looking at the challenges of cultivating deep smarts, including measuring the gap, the dangers of rushing, the limits of technology, and some tips for successful coaching. Although the book is interesting and contains plenty to think about, we have limited its rating because many readers will find that the level of abstraction makes the path to implementation a little fuzzy.