Unleashing Deep Smarts: The Most Valuable Untapped Source of Knowledge Lies within the District's Own Personnel

A widely applied premise in the field of business asserts that the key to an organization's success in today's changing environment is a world-class knowledge management system. The most critical value-added piece of this puzzle lies in what co-authors Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap in their book Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom refer to as the "deep smarts" of an organization's employees. In this article, the authors contend the social and cultural forces that are driving change in the world of business are presenting schools with these same challenges. Further, they assert that the idea of activating the deep smarts of all the professional personnel in a school system is an idea with an enormous upside potential for education.