For the past two decades or so, professional service firms of
all kinds have been trying to get their hands around the subject of
knowledge and especially how to work with knowledge
effectively. Inspired by consultants, journalists, management
writers, etc., there has been a substantial movement to do
something about knowledge, which has had a particular appeal to
those firms whose knowledge was obviously the source of their
wealth-management consulting firms. Law firms led the movement
within professional service firms, followed by a host of other
knowledge-based firms. We can characterize this movement
historically from what these and many other organizations focused
on when they initially tried to manage this elusive thing we call
knowledge.
The first phase was really directed towards managing
information-documents, mostly, renamed and disguised as knowledge.
Inspired by technology vendors and some large industrial concerns,
this attempt proved seriously disappointing to its practitioners
and only lasted a few years, though there are still advocates for
it today.
The second phase was more focused on personal technologies, such
as the newly-ubiquitous PCs, and assumed that pure connectivity was
enough of an impetus to create a knowledge-sharing culture. Much of
the current Web 2.0 energy is directed towards these goals.
Connectivity by itself, while useful and valuable, can also just
produce noise and static. It is no guarantee of any knowledge
development or sharing.
The third and current phase certainly absorbs pieces of these
first two attempts, but is much more focused on the "group" or
"practice." Its practitioners better understand the essentially
social nature of knowledge and how knowledge is organized through
groups of people who share tasks, passions, vocabulary, stories,
tools, and identities.
However, researchers and practitioners have learned that that no
matter what the unit of analysis, there needs to be some specific
direction and management for any knowledge activities to really
have an impact on the organization. Following are some of these
essential elements.
There are three basic things one can do with organizational
knowledge: development, retention and transfer. A firm needs to
allocate its knowledge resources accordingly, based on which of
these activities it wishes to emphasize.
There needs to be a concrete effort to create a
knowledge-sharing culture. This is most usefully done by
maintaining enforced social norms of cooperation. In other words,
fire those who don't share and promote those who do. Signals and
symbols from senior management are also crucial for this work.
Talk up the subject and understand that what you know and how
that knowledge is used is your only competitive advantage. For many
reasons, this fact is still only partially understood in the U.S.,
but it needs to be actively discussed within your organization if
you are going to make any progress in working with this most
valuable but elusive resource.
Dr. Laurence Prusak is a researcher and
consultant and was the founder and Executive Director of the
Institute for Knowledge Management (IKM). He is the author of
a number of books on knowledge management, including
Storytelling in Organizations: why Storytelling is Transforming
21st Century Organizations and Management, What's
the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management
Thinking, Working Knowledge, and Knowledge in
Organizations. He currently co-directs "Working Knowledge," a
knowledge research program at Babson College, where he is a
Distinguished Scholar in Residence.
