Opening Leading Organizational Learning,feel free to begin with
any topic, contribution, or author that seems familiar or interesting.
Progress through the book in any order, or proceed chapter by
chapter if you prefer.
For your convenience, our book is divided into five parts:
“Challenges and Dilemmas,” “Processes That Work,” “Leaders
Who Make a Difference,” “Changes for the Future,” and “Case
Studies and Examples.” Part One, “Challenges and Dilemmas,”
opens with “Why Aren’t Those Specials Selling Today?” in which
Elliott Masie gives a real-life business example of how a problem is
solved by moving ideas. Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-
Turner discuss five organizational cultures and how each reconciles
knowledge management dilemmas in “Five Dilemmas of Knowl-
edge Management.” In “Effectively Influencing Up: Ensuring That
Your Knowledge Makes a Difference,” Marshall Goldsmith offers
ten guidelines intended to help key employees and
knowledge workers do a better job of influencing upper manage-
ment. Niko Canner and Jon Katzenbach explain the upside and
downside of knowledge management in “Where ‘Managing
Knowledge’ Goes Wrong and What to Do Instead.” Marc Effron
concludes this part with “Knowledge Management Involves
Neither Knowledge nor Management,” in which he touts the
benefits of person-to-person contact as the best way to move ideas
through an organization.
Part Two, “Processes That Work,” begins with “The Real Work
of Knowledge Management,” in which Margaret Wheatley dis-
cusses the Information Age and the definition of knowledge, the
beliefs that prevent knowledge management, and the principles
that facilitate it. Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood introduce us
to the three building blocks of learning organizations in “Tangling
with Learning Intangibles.” Larraine Segil explores knowledge
sharing, organization to organization, through outsourcing,
alliances, and profit-centered activities in “When Transferring
Trapped Corporate Knowledge to Suppliers Is a Winning Strategy.”
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