Networking
Shalom to anybody interested enough in Knowledge Management, Change Management, or using these to make yours a Learning Organisation. I will try on a weekly basis to relate here from a practical point of view to events I'm experiencing . Though I wil try to use as much as possible a detached academic approach, I presume that my background in industry management will play an important role in filtering in what interests me and how do I weight it.
I have been lucky to meet over six years ago with Yigal Chamish who was at the time the Knowledge Manager of the Engineering and Planning Division of Bezeq (the local telephone company). I had at the time already caught the KM bug, looking for its practical significance, and for ways to put it to work for industrial corporations to improve their competitive advantage. Yigal was also among those I consulted with, when considering studying for a PhD in the UK (a milestone I have been fortunate to complete in the field of Knowledge Management at Cranfield University a little over a year ago).
The Israeli forum of Knowledge Managers established by Yigal and to which I have belonged from its very beginning as the CKO of Israel Aerospace Industries, and now as the founder of KnowAndManage Inc., convenes on a monthly basis, everytime at the premises of one of its participants. Last Tuesday we were hosted by Yigal who discussed a subject he described as being already over the hype on the global web, though its hasn't caught yet in most organisations (and even less in Israel than elsewhere in the world) - networking.
We discussed the social aspect of creating human networks on a global basis and wandered if the same principles could be applied to the organisational one. Obviously, principles as "The Strength of Week Ties" of Mark Granovetter (1983), "The Six Degrees of Separation" synonimous to Stanley Milgram's (1967) "Small World" phenomenon, "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, as well as the advices of Brian Uzzi, and Shannon Dunlap in "How to Build Your Network" (2005), would be expected to be easier to apply to an organisation of 100, 1000, or even 10,000 people, while it has been claimed to exist for the world population of over 6 billion people. Mathematically, this is correct, yet I believe that the big difference lies in the characteristics of the group we try to apply the principles to. While the anonymous world comprises of a multitude of people, each having a different interest , the organisation has a very specific agenda, which sub-divides to sub-agendas all refering hopefully, to the company's. Connecting to people in the company would have to be related to its agenda one way or another, otherwise it would be considered as odd and wouldn't be entertained. Managers at any level of the company wouldn't consider themselves as such, if they didn't know the people, their attributes, faculties, expertises, and sometimes, even skills. Casting a new project is never a job left to the HR databases managers, and the project manager wouldn't rely but on himself to chose his collaborators. Therefore the straightforward application of the principles mentioned above seems to me simplistic and futile.
Nevertheless, practitioners of KM shouldn't despair, and they should indeed make use of those networking principles during their constant battle to implement the KM approach. The implementation of "Organisational Yellow Pages", shouldn't be looked upon only as a basis for networking, but rather as a means to open people to expose themselves and their ways to contribute to the organisation. A system of adding to them an expertise level as claimed by the "expert", but also as validated by the people in the company using his/her expertise, is another way to apply those networking principles. Looking for "natural champions of the KM cause" while preaching for it, shouldn't limit itself to people interested in the subject, but rather should look for people considered as "king-pins" in the organisation (a kind of "maven" in Gladwell's terms), so that advocating KM would be made through people whose opinion is valued.
I have been lucky to meet over six years ago with Yigal Chamish who was at the time the Knowledge Manager of the Engineering and Planning Division of Bezeq (the local telephone company). I had at the time already caught the KM bug, looking for its practical significance, and for ways to put it to work for industrial corporations to improve their competitive advantage. Yigal was also among those I consulted with, when considering studying for a PhD in the UK (a milestone I have been fortunate to complete in the field of Knowledge Management at Cranfield University a little over a year ago).
The Israeli forum of Knowledge Managers established by Yigal and to which I have belonged from its very beginning as the CKO of Israel Aerospace Industries, and now as the founder of KnowAndManage Inc., convenes on a monthly basis, everytime at the premises of one of its participants. Last Tuesday we were hosted by Yigal who discussed a subject he described as being already over the hype on the global web, though its hasn't caught yet in most organisations (and even less in Israel than elsewhere in the world) - networking.
We discussed the social aspect of creating human networks on a global basis and wandered if the same principles could be applied to the organisational one. Obviously, principles as "The Strength of Week Ties" of Mark Granovetter (1983), "The Six Degrees of Separation" synonimous to Stanley Milgram's (1967) "Small World" phenomenon, "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, as well as the advices of Brian Uzzi, and Shannon Dunlap in "How to Build Your Network" (2005), would be expected to be easier to apply to an organisation of 100, 1000, or even 10,000 people, while it has been claimed to exist for the world population of over 6 billion people. Mathematically, this is correct, yet I believe that the big difference lies in the characteristics of the group we try to apply the principles to. While the anonymous world comprises of a multitude of people, each having a different interest , the organisation has a very specific agenda, which sub-divides to sub-agendas all refering hopefully, to the company's. Connecting to people in the company would have to be related to its agenda one way or another, otherwise it would be considered as odd and wouldn't be entertained. Managers at any level of the company wouldn't consider themselves as such, if they didn't know the people, their attributes, faculties, expertises, and sometimes, even skills. Casting a new project is never a job left to the HR databases managers, and the project manager wouldn't rely but on himself to chose his collaborators. Therefore the straightforward application of the principles mentioned above seems to me simplistic and futile.
Nevertheless, practitioners of KM shouldn't despair, and they should indeed make use of those networking principles during their constant battle to implement the KM approach. The implementation of "Organisational Yellow Pages", shouldn't be looked upon only as a basis for networking, but rather as a means to open people to expose themselves and their ways to contribute to the organisation. A system of adding to them an expertise level as claimed by the "expert", but also as validated by the people in the company using his/her expertise, is another way to apply those networking principles. Looking for "natural champions of the KM cause" while preaching for it, shouldn't limit itself to people interested in the subject, but rather should look for people considered as "king-pins" in the organisation (a kind of "maven" in Gladwell's terms), so that advocating KM would be made through people whose opinion is valued.
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9/29/2007 12:08 PM
מסע, מסה ומשא - תצפית על ארגונים, ניהול וידע wrote:
ברשימה שהתפרסמה בשבוע שעבר במגזין 'עוצמת המידע" של עיתון 'הארץ' ובגרסה מלאה יותר בבלוג שלי, כתבתי בין השאר על אחד עשר חטאי ניהול הידע כפי שמנה אותם Larry Prusak במאמר משותף עם Liam Fahey הנקרא:
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