Technology and Management Innovation?
by Jenny Ambrozek
Jon Husband’s April 26 post here asked:
“Will Enterprise 2.0 Drive Management Innovation?”
Last year watching the buzz around Enterprise 2.0 in a blog post titled: “Enterprise 2.0 “Tips” Not Enough: wikiNOMICS, Chariots of Fire Velocity & Net Work” I wrote:
“…it occurred to me one could globally replace “KM” in most of the “Enterprise 2.0″ posts and you would see the same exchanges pioneers had striving to implement KM in organizations…”
Recently researching an article to be published in Effective Executive Magazine’s June KM edition, I’ve had the privilege of an exchange with Robert H. Buckman whom Infoworld 2003 called “KM’s
father figure”. My interest in Buckman’s work grew reading his March 6 2007 post to the AOK Yahoo Group that included:
“Jerry, thank you for the kind words, but I never did try and manage knowledge. What I really tried to manage and nurture was a culture that would encourage and expand the flow of knowledge. It was because economic value could only be obtained in our environment when knowledge moved across the organization in response to a need.” ~ Robert H. Buckman
We’ve folded every rich nugget of our recent Bob Buckman exchange into our article but suffice to say his focus remains as per the quote above on creating an organization that supports knowledge flow. He told us:
“If you look at it from the standpoint of how much effort it takes to achieve and effect knowledge sharing across an organization, you will find that the technology piece is about 5 to 10 percent of the effort, changing the way work is done is the 90 to 95 percent of the effort. You can define the effort as time or as money, it still comes out about the same” ~ Robert H. Buckman
IBM’s just released CEO survey points to technology being a factor in causing change. Still as mentioned by 37% of CEO’s it ranked behind market forces and people skills, both 48%, as leading external change forces.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
