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The Boomer Blues
A recurring theme in the world of Knowledge Management is the coming retirement of the baby boomers and the impact this loss of
know-how will have on the world at large. People have been anticipating the problem since the late 1990s, and the closer it gets, the more attention it's getting. (A Google search this morning pulled in
17,000 citations for "Knowledge Management" and "Baby Boom.")
The oldest boomers were born in 1946, which means the presumed start of this brain drain will be 2011. That's
five years away, so there should be time to do something about it. But what? Some favor procedural measures, looking for incentives that will keep people working past age 65. A little creativity in mentoring programs and job sharing and part-time work arrangements might
let that institutional knowledge last a little longer. Others look to the reinvention of the HR function, as it becomes an advocate for a knowledge-based approach to people management. Still others are looking for better ways to capture knowledge and retain it in some way. IBM is working to develop web-based "knowledge dashboards" designed to speed the capture and dissemination of information across the
enterprise.
One story worth reading describes how Northrop Grumman formed a KM team when it downsized the B2 bomber group. The year was 1997, and a team of some 13,000 engineers was being reduced to a maintenance staff of 1,200. Grumman worked to identify the top experts, and conducted video debriefings and scrambled to get documents loaded into central repositories. By recognizing the problem early enough, they were able to reduce the cost of lost knowledge. Like Y2K, the retirement of the boomers is something that will happen, ready or not. Companies that are prepared will fare better than those that choose not to worry about it.
Knowledge & Action
We always tell people that KM isn't something new -- the K Street KM Timeline starts with the development of cuneiform in 3500 BC. What's new isn't what happens inside the box of KM, but the way that KM lets you think about knowledge as a kind of underlying currency in human development. Something that should be considered in its own right.
That tends to lead to philosophical discussions about the definition of Knowledge, and one of the ones we've always liked links it to the concept of action. Knowledge is information that leads to
action, or in other words, you have knowledge when you know what to do in a given situation.
It turns out that's not such a new idea either. Wang Yangming, a philosopher in the Confucian tradition, believed that knowledge and action were inseparable. In fact, he felt knowledge would of necessity lead to action, believing
there was a moral imperative that would compel people to put their knowledge into practice. This was in the 13th century.
Maybe there really is nothing new under the sun...
Getting Three Things Right
The Web is a new platform for human interaction, but it hasn't changed the basic rules of
doing business. Companies that are clear about their purpose will likely do well on the web, just as they'll likely do well in more traditional environments. In addition to understanding its purpose, of
course, a company needs to be able to execute. But success may be a matter of getting just three things right: know what you're there for, know what your customers want and make it easy for them to get
it from you.
Consider the Village Hat Shop, a California based merchant that's become a hugely successful web retailer. From relatively
modest brick-and-mortar roots, they've grown their business in ways that probably seemed unimaginable ten years ago. And they didn't do it by changing anything, but by finding ways to move their basic
business model from shop to website.
They assume that people who walk into the place (or visit the site) are there to buy a hat. So they make that as easy as possible. But they also know some
people might have a question or two, and they're ready with the answers. No banner ads, no pop-ups, just hats. Hat care, hat sizing, hat books, hats in history, hats as cultural icons. They even have a
blog about hats.
By getting three things right, they've built a hat empire. And it looks like they've had a lot of fun doing it.
Thinking Inside the Box
We can't remember the first time someone told us we should Think Outside The Box, but we do
remember the idea had an undeniable appeal. Being inside a box didn't sound very positive, after all -- letting your mind free to consider new possibilities had to be a good idea. Didn't it?
Douglas Rushkoff's latest book is Get Back in the Box. His contention is that our obsession with convergence and synergy and other trendy but vague concepts is at the root of a lot of bad decisions. The AOL
Time Warner merger, for example. Rushkoff sees a long-term trend in which competent companies evolve into incompetent conglomerates, overseen by a class of interchangeable managers. Today, it's not
unusual for CEOs to have no experience in their own industry, something that demonstrates a kind of contempt for knowledge. Companies lose the vision of what they're about, business processes become
balance sheet concepts, and workers become alienated from what they do.
Enron is another example. It went from being a company that provided energy to a company that made more money by keeping
energy scarce: from distribution to non-distribution. Compare Enron with Craig's List, which resisted the attentions of venture capitalists in
favor of a simple vision of what it's particular "box" was all about.
It's an interesting book. If you have some time, you can also listen to a Rushkoff interview about it, at wnyc.org.
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