Victor Newman has started blogging with Knowledgeworks. I've always appreciated his unconventional take on knowledge management, so I was happy to see that he hasn't changed his approach in this piece, Don't Share -Build. From the summary (and to see he take on the world):
- Reduce the number of idiots in the organisation to the bare minimum necessary. No-one will share anything with an idiot.
- Employ the tactic of using language with real meaning. Deliberately stop talking about Knowledge Sharing: it only confuses people with its altruism and its implicit democratic message. Start defining aspirational knowledge frameworks within which new knowledge can be built that meets the need of delivering competitive advantage.
- Create crises to focus knowledge contribution from those who can, and remove investment from the aimless sharing of everything.
- Use 30/70 until they notice, then do something else.
One of Victor's early comments is that knowledge follows the laws of supply and demand: knowledge available to many people has less value than knowledge available to the few. The more common claim is that knowledge isn't like commodities in that is not limited supply: you can share an idea with one person or 100 people. These statements aren't opposed to one another, they just expose different philosophies about knowledge sharing. Victor seems to be onto something, though.
Oh, and be prepared. These aren't short little blog posts.
We were both employees of Pfizer, though I never had the opportunity to work directly with him before deciding to do other stuff.