Secondly, managers cannot expect to hide the bucket of clear water from the hundreds of liquid die drops that the new learning will bring forth.  This is where many organizations fail to capitalize in their new findings.  Once the new learnings start flowing through the organization, leaders present resistance to the waves of change that accompany these freshly acquired know how's.  The reason being that the new knowledge brought forward by the employees, most often will not fit the current  organizational reality, thus requiring a transformation of the organizational absolutes.  The new business realities resulting from this transformation will become the new organizational absolute knowledge.  Hence, this new absolute necessarily needs to be put up at risk next time around if continuous learning is  desired.   

Socrates gracefully models this kind of practice through his constant inquiry and personal transformation.  By continuously questioning Theaetetus, he expands the young man's knowledge and connects with his (Theaetetus) learning process.  (He searches for the hundreds of die drops)  At the same time, Socrates evaluates and questions his own knowledge base, expanding and transforming what he thinks is true.  (He then welcomes the die drops into his water bucket)  By not stating his perception of what he thinks is real, Socrates frees himself from the chains that  anchor him to his old knowledge, thus opening new possibilities in his learning.  Socrates consciously follows the search to where it leads him.

For most leaders in organizations, questions, and the challenges brought up by them, are seen as a menacing factor.  To have a worker questioning the organizational beliefs is often misunderstood for a rebellious and misaligned employee.  "Learning is subversive" says Paulo Freire and thus all learning implies a risk.  This risky nature of inquiring beyond what's known is one of the main reasons that deter the expansion of the organizational knowledge.

This was the same thing that happened to our friend Socrates in his days, and his "mis-alignenment" with society cost him his life.  Luckily for today's workers death by poison is not a punishment.  If we want to learn from history, leaders should  notice the "Socrates" in their organizations and keep them alive, I meant in their payroll.  Otherwise history will repeat itself and the organization will suffer greatly.   

The development of an organizational culture that constantly questions the way business is being done is one of Socrates' greatest teachings.  This means that organizations have to create more than a knowledgeable worker.  It is through the creation of an inquirer worker and an organizational culture that values the outcomes of this search that the design of a Learning Organization and the established Knowledge Management Systems can achieve its biggest success.  As simple as it may sound, it all needs to start with the nurturing of a questioning culture.  A     culture that requires and understands that it is expected from them to come up with the questions that will lead the organization into the future.