Wednesday, October 09, 2002

Knowledge is Power!
I often get asked to demonstrate the value of KM, or show the return on investment. Tools like Benefit Trees are quite handy in this respect - they allow you to construct the response as a string of impacts from intangible things like 'improved customer understanding' to more traditional territory like 'increased customer retention rate'. It allows more constructive discussion around, say, the case for transferring knowledge between different parts of the organization. This is equally powerful in reverse - e.g. when people tell me I should be giving away my knowledge to others. Like hell I will - "What, you want me to write my own resignation letter too?" I ask. Oddly, these same tree-huggin' hippy KM types don't understand the source of my resistance and think I need culture change. Tsk. I find it helps to run them through the 'Knowledge Sharing Chain':

* share your knowledge
-> credit to somebody else
-> passed over for promotion
-> depression
-> alcoholism
-> marital breakdown
-> destitution
-> die a bum

Inspired by : Innervation by Guy Browning the only management book you can talk about at parties.

No comments: