Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal about one of the real dilemmas facing business today – knowledge management. Workers at various levels of organizations accumulate through experience knowledge that helps them be more efficient and effective. “But few organizations have figured out how to share knowledge among employees, or to pass it on when employees leave or change assignments,” the WSJ reports.
Part of the problem is that many executives simply don’t think it is important, relying more on technology than on the human equation. “Last year,” according to the Journal, “when consulting firm Bain & Co. asked 960 executives about the effectiveness of 25 management tools, knowledge management ranked near the bottom.”
There have been attempts to create technology-driven solutions to the problem, the paper suggests, as companies look for ways to institutionalize the informal sharing that often has gone on between employees. But it has been hit-and-miss, making all the more clear how important knowledge management actually is.
Part of the problem is that many executives simply don’t think it is important, relying more on technology than on the human equation. “Last year,” according to the Journal, “when consulting firm Bain & Co. asked 960 executives about the effectiveness of 25 management tools, knowledge management ranked near the bottom.”
There have been attempts to create technology-driven solutions to the problem, the paper suggests, as companies look for ways to institutionalize the informal sharing that often has gone on between employees. But it has been hit-and-miss, making all the more clear how important knowledge management actually is.
- KC's View:
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Fascinating. This is a completely new area for us, something we didn’t know anything about.
But it makes perfect sense, and probably is something that more senior executives ought to be concerned about, especially in a people-driven business such as retailing. We wonder how many retailers even have knowledge management initiatives in place in their companies.
