needed to do this (we couldn’t figure out how to automate it) far
exceeded the potential returns.
Point of Interest: Another global consulting firm didn’t want to use
“pictures” in its documents, considering them “cartoonish.” As a
result, all their documents were in Microsoft Word, which take
about one-tenth the space of PowerPoint documents. A completely
serendipitous by-product of this decision was that their consultants
were much more capable of accessing and using their document
repositories because the limitations of dial-up connection speeds
didn’t deter them from obtaining the right information.It was the nuggetizing exercise that caused us to think that doc-
uments might not be the answer. Furthermore, looking at this from
the perspective of how engaged people were with the knowledge,
the answer was “not very.” We were completely reliant on natural
curiosity and people’s desire to grow professionally as the behavioral
drivers that would cause them to sift through the databases. This is
a formula for medium to low levels of engagement.
Then We Rediscovered PeopleFollowing the corporate motto, “People are our most important
asset,” knowledge management evolved from a document-centric
view toward a more person-centered view of knowledge sharing
and transfer. There were four main reasons for knowledge manage-
ment’s shift toward people:
- As we filled up our repositories with documents, we started to
give more thought to how people would engage with the
repositories to find material, as well as what we were hoping
they might do once they did find the material. - Our growing body of experience showed us just how hard it is
to represent knowledge on paper with enough context that
other people can find and apply it to their specific situation.
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