Book Review - Deep Smarts

In their book Deep Smarts, Leonard and Swap described employees’ ability to make the correct decision at the correct level with the right people as deep smarts. Employees with deep smarts developed unique experiences and skills and made decisions based more on knowledge than on facts. Guided experience is the most successful manner in which to cultivate and transfer deep smarts. Baby boomers inclined and enabled to transfer tacit knowledge can only do so if they have a willing recipient, a common code, common knowledge, or overlapping knowledge.

Leonard and Swap described the pending baby boomer retirement as a tsunami. Many organizations will not realize the value of the loss of employees’ deep smarts until workers leave their jobs. The unique, context-specific knowledge residing in the heads and hands of baby boomers is an undervalued and poorly managed organizational asset in most organizations. Because knowledge depends on context, the deep smarts of employees are difficult to measure, harvest, and transfer.