Each one of us has different ways of knowing and different ways of accessing that knowledge to inform our decisions and actions. Our observation from working with senior executives is that most of us do not really know what we know and how we have come to know it. The general belief is that executive leaders use primarily rationality and logic based knowledge to make informed decisions.

Through our work with over one hundred Chief Executive Officers, and other leaders over a period of more than 20 years, we have discovered that leaders have different levels of awareness about their own knowing, knowledge, decision-making process and actions. It is fair to say that most CEOs and senior executives do not necessarily make decisions based on the facts alone but on internal processes that -- they claim -- are important to them.

It is also true that people make different decisions when they are in their ‘fundamental state of leadership’ versus in their ‘normal state of leadership’. In a fundamental state, they are in touch with their deeper aspirations, and challenges, whereas in a normal state, they operate based on standards, ideals and other conditioned reflexes. So the person who knows and the person who describes what they know — are ‘different.’

We are currently in the process of interviewing successful business executives, decision makers and political leaders from different parts of the world in order to understand and describe the processes, both inner and outer, by which they come to know what they know in attempting to manage and cope with uncertainty. We want to examine and understand the differences in and the range of ways of knowing and acting for people who are operating in different fields – such as business, arts, sports, politics, and science – in different cultures and nations, including the United States, Europe, and India/Asia.

Thank you in advance for your participation in this project.

Prasad Kaipa
Mark Kriger