Wednesday 23 January 2008

When Governance Impedes Movement

Or, The Quicksand of Codification

Or, How To Be A Corporate Ninja

I recently read an interesting item in Gurteen's newsletter which besides telling me he is in Bangkok (great city, ignore anything anyone says about how seedy it is, it has way way more to offer), noted a need for managers 2.0. Modeled on our new, open, social way of doing things now that web 2.0 has arrived. In the item in question he noted a book called The Future of Management here a number of points are proposed describing this new type of manager. These are:

  • Everyone has a voice.
  • The tools of creativity are widely distributed.
  • Its easy and cheap to experiment.
  • Capability counts for more than credentials and titles.
  • Commitment is voluntary.
  • Power is granted from below.
  • Authority is fluid and contingent on value-added.
  • The only hierarchies are "natural" hierarchies.
  • Communities are self-defining. Individuals are richly empowered with information.
  • Just about everything is decentralized.
  • Ideas compete on an equal footing.
  • It's easy for buyers and sellers to find each other.
  • Resources are free to follow opportunities.
  • Decisions are peer-based.

All interesting and good but not entirely new. In one of the essays in the MIT book Knowledge Management: Classic and Contemporary Works a model for organisations is given where middle management is much smaller but greater emphasis is placed on experts. So too tools such as internal conferences, leading on internal CoPs and other wonderfully engaging processes are implemented and have delivered greater retention of employees and higher employee satisfaction.

But I still think these companies are leaders in the field and unfortunately I have a sneaking suspicion that however much we hear of the increasing importance of KM, it is still not internalised. Which leads me on to the need to be a corporate ninja.

I had to train for many years on the mountain tops of Tibet before realising myself as one and capable of hearing the need for another governance strategy at 500 paces. After these years of training I feel I am now capable of teaching you the ways of the covert KM worker. So while the leaders mull and chew the need for control it is your job to make sure the blood of knowledge can still flow through.

Mmmm, okay the metaphor is not that great but basically there is a need in every organisation for those who will push against the grain. It is the tension between the need for proper management and organisational structures against those that work within it that is the most dynamic part. As a KM person with a bit of (but never quite enough) influence, in most organisations there will be a desire to bog you down with models, ownership, outputs, targets, etc. Having worked as a consultant for many years and seen the effects of organisations that don't have any of this in place I would be the last person to suggest that this was not necessary. All these things are good but within them there has to be an implication of trust. Someone hired these people based on the idea that they were good enough to do the job so let them get on.

KM requires more trust than most other parts of the business process. Although everyone can see the benefits they are hard to quantify with any immediacy and in the long term it would be hard to identify what exactly KM was responsible for within an evolving and changing organisation.

So while governance and ownership are important these are not new things. They have always been needed and always will be needed. What you can add is trying to develop the fastest way between two points of knowledge without being asked to map it . . . in infinitesimal detail. Remember it is not the managers who are the core of the organisation, it is the product and if you can help the product, in the end, no one will complain (well they might actually).

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