The Invisible Asset Your Spreadsheet Misses

This week, Alex and Emily are discussing a concept that most executives never hear about until it’s too late, process knowledge. Drawing on Dan Wang’s book Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future and a key scene from Julien’s book Crash and [Burn] LEARN, they explore what happens when leaders move too fast to see the invisible expertise that keeps organizations running.

They talk about why burned-out leaders are especially likely to undervalue tacit knowledge, how the Competence Illusion — one of the ten blind spots that lead to burnout — shows up in acquisition decisions and restructuring plans, and what executives can do to surface and protect the wisdom their organizations carry before it walks out the door.