What looks like a personality clash may actually reflect different ways of using knowledge. In many teams, the same tensions appear: One person wants more evidence before moving forward. Another wants to stop discussing and start implementing. Someone introduces new possibilities. And someone questions whether the team is solving the right problem at all. These differences are often interpreted as resistance or incompatibility. In his latest article, Nelson Enrique Muñoz Cerda offers another perspective through an exploratory model based on two dimensions: ↔️ Conservation or transformation - Do we apply existing knowledge or challenge and reconfigure it? ↕️ Problem or action orientation - Do we prioritise understanding or execution? Together, they produce 4 orientations: 🔍 Conservative-Analytical - Protects rigour and established boundaries. ⚙️ Conservative-Executor - Turns proven knowledge into results. 💡 Transformative-Executor - Experiments and applies knowledge in new ways. ❓ Transformative-Analytical - Questions assumptions and reframes problems. None is inherently better than the others. Each contributes something valuableand each creates risks when it operates without the balance of the rest. A team that only analyses may never act. A team that only executes may move quickly in the wrong direction. A team that only preserves existing knowledge may struggle to adapt, while one that constantly transforms may lack stability. The most useful question, therefore, is not “Who is right?” It is “When does the team need each perspective?” The profiles are not fixed personality types or validated diagnostic categories. They are flexible orientations designed to help teams replace judgement with curiosity and turn cognitive differences into more productive collaboration. Read “Four Ways of Using Knowledge in a Team: A Model for Understanding How People Learn and Act in Collective Work” by Nelson Muñoz Cerda.
This resonates strongly with my work in knowledge and competence management. I would add one more dimension: context. The same person can be analytical in one situation and highly execution-oriented in another. The real organisational competence is therefore not having the “right” profiles, but recognising which perspective is missing at a particular moment — and making it usable for the team. Difference becomes a resource only when the organisation knows how to work with it.
Right on! Empirical knowledge will typically entail "social negotiation" ...as it should.
Hello! I am intrigued by this idea. Will you be posting the link in the post or in the comments? I am unable to find it.
Nelson, this connects directly with what we work on in Communication within Estrategia Coherente: these four orientations don't just think differently, they speak differently. The Analytical asks for evidence, the Executor asks for clear instructions, the Transformative asks for room to explore. If the team's communication doesn't translate between those languages, everyone interprets the same meeting differently, and that's where an incoherence nobody decided on, but everyone ends up living with, begins. Great addition to the model.
Protect what's known Use what's known Questions new ideas Apply new ideas. Being religious i use the first 3 alot. The fourth i like to use when i think of tinkering something.
🔗 Read the full article here: https://becisions.com/insights/post?slug=identify-your-teams-learning-profiles-before-investing-in-training