Increasingly and in the future it is to be expected that in geometric progression, we are seeing the irruption of knowledge management as an issue that occupies the business management agenda in many areas. It is in itself a concept that offers business. However, much of what we see and hear is nothing more than the use of etiquette for what is actually sophisticated information management. The question that a manager should ask himself before embarking on knowledge management programs is whether knowledge can really be managed.
Knowledge management on the rise
The world of knowledge management is like an elephant in which different groups claim to be busy, but they only cover, in reality, a part. In any case, each part of this cake is already a lucrative business for the ever-booming management book industry, companies related to information technology and software, management consulting, and the world of training.. At the application level, more and more companies, many of them leaders in different sectors, are involved in projects that try to capture and create new knowledge in their organizations.
The development of knowledge management owes its success to the development of many intellectual capital intensive industries, as opposed to the traditional labor intensive company or financial or technological capital. In this sense, the increasing use of information technologies is a facilitator in the treatment and exchange of knowledge among the people of a company, helping to share what is known and what is going to be learned, transcending space and time.. The possibilities for communication have grown immensely. But as a colleague of mine said, two phones do not guarantee good conversations. Let us point out, therefore, before continuing that information technologies can only store and distribute, a part, although important, of people's knowledge,while other knowledge can only be shared through socialization and teamwork.
New management theories
The second contributing factor to the explosion of knowledge management is that there is a change in the dominant paradigm of business management theories. Theories of competitiveness have revolved around the analysis of external forces, such as the 5 competitive forces of Michael Porter, while in recent times we have moved to competitiveness based on internal skills and competencies. If the environments are changing, it is not so important to determine and limit external aspects, such as technology, competitors, suppliers, clients and new entrants, since the drawing changes every day. What matters is having the organization and the people ready to respond. The ability to adapt becomes the greatest asset of an organization and competing is an art in motion.In this way it is affirmed in the theories of competitiveness based on resources that the main resource of an organization is knowledge. The works of Peter Senge, and Nonaka ´Takeuchi, have popularized the idea of an organization that adapts itself based on constant learning and creating knowledge, going from managing scarce resources to taking advantage of some of the many opportunities that come before our door.
Knowledge is a concept that seems businesslike, very ethereal, and unwieldy. This is what happens, for example, with the so-called business “culture”. What worries companies is how it is transferred to the organizational forms and models that make a company learn, adapt and innovate. The managers and executives of the company do not care about the philosophical debate about what knowledge is, but it should not fall. in the easy answer or we will lose the great potential that the concept holds.
If we look at software programs, it seems that knowledge management is reduced to installing a program or creating an intranet. This however is the tip of the iceberg, or the leg of our elephant. If we go back to the seminal authors in the theory of knowledge, Nonaka and Senge, for example, we find basic premises that knowledge is information treated with a purpose, that is indivisibly linked to people, who can only express part of what they know, there is always a remainder that is the internalized tacit knowledge of great value but difficult to transmit or make explicit. Although the division between tacit and explicit knowledge is not radical, information technologies can only work with explicit knowledge,and therefore people are key in the knowledge creation processes. Irreplaceable.
Manage knowledge VS create the right space to share it
Now, another question is the question that everyone asks, what reason do people have to share knowledge? Organizational, and almost genetically installed, inheritance is very defensive. In highly hierarchical companies, where some think and others do not, and in companies that work with an emphasis on procedure, change begins with the managers themselves. It is a very strong change, so that almost all of us are going to have a hard time unlearning what we have learned over the years. Better to keep the knowledge, as a guarantee of my position, than to give it openly, although curiously, knowledge is the only resource that grows when used. Being the main motivation to share knowledge, reciprocity, the company must generate what has come to be called a climate of trust. This is the challenge of managing the future.
Companies that want to manage knowledge must first understand that what they must do is generate an adequate climate and this may be installing a program or an intranet, but this is not the essence. The key is that from the traditional emphasis on material assets, infrastructure is going to move to the emphasis on intangible assets, and necessarily it is going to try to create emotional assets such as trust, empathy and personal relationships. An excellent company today is the sum of Customer Knowledge + Ability to absorb knowledge from the environment multiplied by the responsiveness and elevated to confidence.
A merger, a joint venture project, or a strategic alliance are situations in which it is necessary to exchange knowledge in a climate of trust to create new things, synergies that add up to more than the parties. A well focused knowledge management program is a blessing in these situations.
The great challenge of knowledge management is that it cannot be managed as such. What is possible is to manage the process and the space of knowledge creation. Giving people back the ability to think and self-organize will be the great step in believing that people are inside, intrinsically the ability to improve and create new things. The knowledge company is a rethought company where there is leadership, trust in people, reflected in advanced training systems, motivation, remuneration, etc., and also, of course, a creative use of information technology.
Let's call it Knowledge Management, since the term is coined, but let's think about all the meaning of the concept both to investigate and to apply it in the company. Let's go to knowledge management step by step but knowing that we are talking about the strong idea of innovative companies of the new millennium.
