Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Knowledge Workers (That’s Us!) Need a New Organization

We’re living in a “knowledge economy” where intangibles like brains and innovation trump tangibles like corporate mass and size. So I was especially eager to read the Economist’s “survey” of this issue in its January 21 issue. I recommend it to you (see www.economist.com) , and in particular I want to bring one passage to your attention. Especially since I’ve been singing this tune with my clients for years, I was especially pleased to see it so eloquently presented. Here’s what the Economist said:

Companies now are investing huge sums in such systems of “knowledge management”, which include their intranets and their internal databases. One company describes its intranet as “a vibrating current of what is going on in the business”. The challenge is to ensure that employees can plug into this vibrating current as and when they need it.

Re-read the last sentence. The key to effective knowledge management is not for leaders to censor, filter, and dole out information to employees as they (leaders) see fit. (I’ve seen a lot of this careful editorial censorship when executives present supposedly “sensitive” data like financials and competitive information to the rank and file). Nor does effective knowledge management occur when leaders simply overwhelm employees by sending them copies of just about every message and document and fact that flows through the organization. When people are drowning in data, they can’t effectively use information. Either alternative reduces knowledge management to the status of lip service, or a soft mockery.

Instead, the solution is to provide employees with the capacity to quickly access whatever information, document, communication, archive, or person that they need to in order to make an optimal decision. Each employee and manager decides what he or she needs and doesn’t need, and when. They decide which spigot to use, and when to turn it on and off.

But don’t believe me. Here’s what the Economist says:

There are three broad approaches to knowledge management. One is to create a system where all information goes to everybody, which is hugely inefficient; the second tells people what others think they need to know, which may not match their real needs; and the third enables them to find for themselves whatever they want to know. Companies like to say that they aim for the third approach, but they do not always find it easy.”

They don’t find it easy because they operate in a closed-door, “for-your-eyes-only” culture or with information systems that are technologically weak or not geared towards frictionless candor. In other words, the organization must have both an “boundariless”, transparent culture and the most state-of-the-art information systems and technologies. If you really want to capitalize on the knowledge economy, start addressing these culture and technology issues, and invest heavily in training people to operate in that sort of environment.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

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3:03 AM  
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2:26 PM  
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9:22 PM  

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