InformationWeek

September 14, 1998

Executive Report: The Organization And Knowledge

By Jeff Angus

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ost companies that are strategic users of IT fall clearly into one of two camps, and this shapes the way they try to manage their corporate knowledge. Aggressive users who embrace technology to discover new opportunities or reformulate business plans use knowledge as a weapon. Defensive users who rely on technology to avoid failures and optimize past successes are less likely to use knowledge strategies.

As companies face the third millennium in an ever-changing environment, the dichotomy between the two camps becomes even clearer. Aggressive organizations are coping with the pace of change by turning common knowledge into information that can be shared effortlessly among those in the company who need it. But defensive users are too occupied with other projects to do this. According to a recent InformationWeek Research survey of 150 IT managers, the primary barrier to implementing knowledge-management solutions is competing organizational priorities.

chart Given the diversity of businesses-and their varyingly aggressive or defensive styles-are there some rules that can make the application of knowledge more effective? Experts in the field have different points of view. Susan Hanley, director of knowledge management at consulting firm American Management Systems, and Bipin Junnarkar, director of knowledge management at Monsanto Corp., both say it's important to appoint a specific person or a team to take primary responsibility for the dissemination of knowledge.

But Ron Shevlin, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc., doesn't think organizations should have chief knowledge officers, knowledge staff, and knowledge projects. Instead, he says every project should have knowledge-management components.

Arian Ward, leader of work ecology with Hughes Space and Communications in Los Angeles, takes the integrated knowledge-management concept one step further. Ward suggests that companies form knowledge communities, which he calls ecosystems. He says the way to get people involved in these knowledge communities is to show them how they will benefit personally from the exchange of information.

Whichever approach a company chooses, knowledge management may be hard to implement. In many U.S. companies, employees are rewarded for hoarding information, not for sharing it. Also, sharing information openly in a company requires a stable and loyal staff, which may be hard to develop given the common use today of contractors, temporaries, and outsourced workers.

Knowledge management may not pay for itself at companies in which shared information becomes dated quickly. In those cases, IT executives may want to go beyond knowledge management to develop "wisdom" management, which teaches people when and how to apply rules in an ever-changing business environment.

When knowledge management-or wisdom management-is introduced in even forward-looking organizations, it affects the culture of the company. Knowledge management can succeed only if companies accept this fact and are open to change.

Jeff Angus is a senior technology editor at the InformationWeek Labs.

"Executive Report: IT Innovators"

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