Knowledge Transfer · Applied Intelligence

For most of my adult life, I have been interested in a deceptively simple question:

Why do some people and organizations consistently perform better than others, even when they appear to have access to many of the same resources, information, people, and opportunities?

The longer I have studied that question, the more convinced I have become that meaningful improvement rarely comes from a single program, department, technology, consultant, or new idea.

Organizations are systems.

Sales affects operations. Operations affects customer experience. Training affects productivity. Leadership affects communication. Pricing affects cash flow. Hiring affects capacity. Technology affects workflow. Marketing affects demand. Follow-up affects retention. Knowledge affects nearly everything.

And weaknesses rarely remain isolated.

A problem that first appears to belong to one department may originate somewhere entirely different.

That understanding has shaped what I now call The Leavitt Method and the larger body of work being developed through TOKORAI — Transfer of Knowledge through Orchestration, Research, and Applied Intelligence.

At the business level, one expression of that work is Business Performance Architecture, or BPA.

BPA approaches an organization as an interconnected performance system. Rather than beginning with the assumption that a business needs more advertising, more sales, different employees, new software, lower expenses, or some other predetermined solution, the first responsibility is to understand what is occurring across the organization.

Where is value being created?

Where is it being lost?

What is performing well?

What is underperforming?

Where are resources sitting unused?

Where are people working around broken processes?

Where is knowledge concentrated in one person instead of being transferred?

Where are customers being lost between departments?

Where are decisions being made from incomplete or outdated information?

Where is money quietly leaking through inefficiency, duplication, rework, poor scheduling, missed follow-up, weak pricing, unnecessary expense, or opportunities that nobody can clearly see?

These are not questions that can always be answered by looking at a financial statement or interviewing one department.

They require examination of the business as a whole.

My work has been influenced by decades of studying business, sales, finance, logistics, communications, education, organizational systems, human behavior, ministry, technology, and the transfer of knowledge. I have also spent much of my life studying the ideas and methods developed by those who came before us, from traditional apprenticeship and management practices to modern quality systems, performance measurement, systems thinking, and the extraordinary possibilities now emerging through Applied Intelligence.

I do not believe technology replaces human judgment.

I believe good technology makes good judgment more powerful.

The same is true of knowledge. Possessing information is not enough. Knowledge has to be understood, transferred, applied, tested against reality, and converted into capability and performance.

That principle eventually produced seven interconnected areas of architecture within TOKORAI:

Contact Advancement

Transfer of Knowledge

Human Capability

Operational Performance

Business Performance

Quick Action Response

Business Value Exchange

Each examines a different dimension of how people and organizations function. Together, they allow us to see relationships that are difficult to recognize when each part of an organization is examined independently.

I am not interested in changing something simply because it can be changed.

Many organizations already have people, processes, traditions, relationships, and methods that work extremely well. Those should be understood and preserved.

The objective is to distinguish between what should be protected, what should be improved, what should be connected, what should be measured, and what may need to be reconsidered entirely.

That requires listening before prescribing.

It requires understanding before recommending.

And it requires recognizing that every organization has its own history, people, culture, capabilities, limitations, opportunities, and purpose.

The work described throughout MichaelLeavitt.com and TOKORAI.com represents an evolving body of knowledge built around that approach.

It is not intended to provide a quick answer to every business problem.

It is intended to provide a better way to see the whole system clearly enough to ask better questions, make better decisions, develop greater capability, and create better performance over time.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about the work.

Respectfully,

Founder and Developer

TOKORAI — Transfer Of Knowledge, Orchestration, Research & Applied Intelligence