International Data Corporation, “Knowledge is power, and to pub-
lish your knowledge is to relinquish it.”^7 This long-acknowledged
information-hoarding issue is still not adequately addressed at most
companies. One highly intrusive way around this challenge is found
in new “sifting” software that mines companies’ e-mails to identify
content expertise that isn’t being shared. If I’ve sent ten e-mails on
succession planning, I might be flagged as a knowledgeable source,
whether accurate or not. Aside from the ethical questions that this
technology raises, it leaves open the question “Are you getting bet-
ter information or just more of it?”
- There’s No Incentive to Share
We’re all team players who believe in the benefits of coopera-
tion. We’re all also very busy, and convincing busy professionals
that sharing their information should be a priority must involve
either a carrot or a stick. Most firms implementing KM made the
false assumption that professionals would prioritize their time
around stocking the database instead of pursuing the other dozen
objectives that they would actually be rewarded for achieving. I
know of no major corporation that measures and rewards employ-
ees’ contributions to their “knowledge database.”
- The ROI Is Difficult to Prove
In a period of dramatic cutbacks in corporate discretionary spend-
ing, multimillion-dollar KM investments haven’t proved their
worth. Unlike customer relationship management software, in
which the financial benefits of improved customer relationships
can be measured through traditional financial metrics like revenue
per account, KM has no tangible measures of success. “Most of the
benefit of [KM] is anecdotal,” says Charles Lucier, Booz Allen’s
chief knowledge officer. “I can’t prove it, but we do better work.”^8
That level of proof might not be sufficient for today’s CFOs.
NEITHERKNOWLEDGE NORMANAGEMENT 43