b.cognosco

The Power of Knowledge Sharing

Dear K-Loggers,

Here is an article that I think you will enjoy:

http://jrobb.userland.com/stories/2002/07/19/itsKsNotKm.html

It is an interview with Robert Buckman (he is credited with inventing the term Knowledge Management -- I have been told there is a Harvard B-School case study on him).

His new focus: Knowledge Sharing. Basically, how do we move beyond the small amount of explicit knowledge available (the knowledge that is stored in document repositories -- which is the focus of most KM systems) to a system of Knowledge Sharing (KS). His argument is that the vast majority (90%) of corporate knowledge is the in the heads of employees and it changes rapidly. A system that makes it easy for them to share that knowledge across the enterprise is what is needed. [...]

Please read the Buckman interview. Go ahead, I'll wait...

There is much good thinking taking place right now on how to bring people within a business together on both emotional and intellectual levels. I think the scandals rocking corporate America have a lot to do with that.

Perhaps more than most, I have witnessed failure in KM, CRM, and intranet initiatives -- at great cost in time, money, effort, and emotion. I've also witnessed an entire industry stymied and rendered stagnant by its inability to adapt even rudimentary knowledge sharing principles. I don't intend to be a part of that anymore, or to suffer from it's consequences.

I plan to learn from it. K-logs are not a stand-alone solution -- they are just a tool. Much more is needed. But they are a good, flexible starting point. Combined with some threaded discussion and a little document sharing we have the beginnings of a powerful intranet, and the basis for what John refers to as the Digital Dashboard. As John says:

I think he [Buckman] is on the same track we are with K-Logs. My thinking is that a K-Log system enables the capture and sharing of unstructured knowledge in a way that is understandable to most people. When combined with real-time data delivery in a composite app (a digital dashboard -- I will explain more on how Radio can enable that later), it provides employees with a complete overview of what is going on in a corporation. The great part about this is that it all occurs within the confines of an easily customized Web page running in a browser.

This is a powerful concept. As Jim McGee says, "Pay attention. It will affect you." If you are going to make a difference in the future you will have to understand this. Any company that hopes to grow beyond geographic boundaries will be forced to find effective ways to share knowledge -- not manage it. This quote from Buckman says a lot:

I think we are able to continue achieving success in this area because we are continuing to re-define the equation of what is possible in what we call 'knowledge sharing' or 'knowledge management'. We started out by increasing the Span of Communication of each individual in the company by giving them laptops and connecting them to a global network. (This was about 5 per cent of the effort.) We then worked on increasing their individual Span of Influence by encouraging them to share their knowledge across the stovepipes of the organisation on a global basis. (This was about 90 per cent of the effort.)

Note that 90 percent of the effort was spent encouraging people to share. The truth is, most people simply don't know how to do this. They feel intimidated, unworthy, ovewhelmed, suspicious, or ambivalent. But it is an absolute requirement for success in any company effort. K-logs, and blogging in general, making sharing fun! It is a kick to write things and see other people get use from them -- a self-reinforcing loop that makes knowlege-sharing a natural process.

This has important implications for anyone looking to start, manage, or grow a successful business in the future. I've spent quite a bit of time over the past two days thinking about the strategies a company needs to go forward:

• Financial strategy -- where do we find capital, profit, and the right level of fiscal stewardship
• Market strategy -- to whom do we sell
• Product/Service strategy -- what do we sell
• Operations strategy -- How do we make what we sell, where do we add value
• Growth/Time strategy -- when do the milestones in these other strategies occur
• Information strategy -- how do we ensure these strategies are aligned and on track, that the output from one gets properly translated into the input for another, that we are warned quickly when they fall out of alignment, all while remaining aware at any given time how our actions affect others and how their actions may affect us.

Of these, the most important is the Information strategy, or rather the strategy for sharing information. Oh, I expect professional investors, CPAs, and financial whizzes would squawk at such an assumption, but the proof is ample. Hundreds of companies had financial strategies that fooled the experts, suckered the experienced, and squandered billions. I've personally known several companies that went through $10s of millions trying to build businesses that, today, struggle to bring in just a few million in annual revenue, if they exist at all. For the vast majority of businessmen financial strategies are straightforward -- start small, focus on profitability, be patient for growth. Successful world-domination strategies are few and far between.

The key to success is having everyone know what the correct financial goals are, and tracking openly against achievement. If you have a group of people dedicated to meeting the correct objectives, and working with open flows of information, they can modify and correct ANY of the other strategies to meet the financial objectives. More importantly, if financial objectives have been so skewed, inflated, or obfuscated they cannot be reached it will soon be obvious to everyone. An open flow of information ensures no one strategy can dominate in a way that endangers the efforts of everyone else (ala Enron.)

There are more opportunities for failure than for success, and the keys to winning are shared vision, shared knowledge, and shared effort.

This Page was last updated: Sun, 04 Dec 2005 04:54:29 GMT