Chapter Twenty-FiveLeadership and Access to Ideas
Allan R. Cohen
This chapter is based on three premises. First, spreading ideas is less
about technology than about making who knows what clear to the
people who want or need to know.^1 (I’d love to see a technology
that is a good substitute for this relatively inefficient method but
doubt it is in the offing.) No amount of technology can force
people to share ideas, electronically or otherwise, if they don’t want
to share them.
Second, leadership creates the structure and climate that
encourage or discourage the movement of ideas. Culture, which is
partly a product of leadership, does the same. Individuals can and
do subvert the leadership and culture, for good or ill, but organiza-
tion is supposed to increase the odds for all, so we need to figure out
what does that.
Third, as a consultant, I have never directly advised on “knowl-
edge management” or “organizational learning,” but they are
always a close by-product of other interventions, such as strategic
change, top team building, organizational restructuring, and lead-
ership education. My best direct experience was when I was in a
managerial role as VP for academic affairs at Babson College, so I
will draw heavily from that. One case does not make for grand
generalizations, but I believe there is learning to be gleaned from
close and firsthand examination of a relatively small but complex
organization (five hundred people) consisting of knowledge
281The author thanks Tom Davenport for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this
chapter.