- Put Accountability Where It Belongs
Managing knowledge is a fundamental part of managing an orga-
nization, and accountability for it should rest with those in line
management. Though HR or IT may install the computer system,
line managers must be held accountable for getting quality infor-
mation into the system. Line managers must also be held account-
able to ensure that their team gets the experiences they need to
acquire knowledge. In Hewitt Associates’ “Top 20 Companies
for Leaders” study, the use of development assignments to build
capabilities differentiated the best firms from the also-rans.^15
- Sure, Have a Database
It’s easier than paper for keeping track of information that supports
knowledge. However, along with all the other conventions for stor-
ing and retrieving data, two key components must be in place for
this database to be effective. First, you must have a live, knowl-
edgeable human being screen every piece of information that goes
into it to ensure that only the best work is accessible. While costly
and bureaucratic, there’s simply no substitute for this. Second,
there must be incentives in place for sharing information. This
means that you must have a method to track who is submitting
information to the database for consideration and have a mean-
ingful part of employees’ annual incentive based on that sharing.
Is this a lot of effort? It probably is, but who ever said that
trying to extract and categorize every piece of company informa-
tion into a searchable database religiously serviced by your entire
professional staff was going to be easy? Who? Oh, yeah, I guess
they did.
ConclusionThe laudatory objectives of KM should not be abandoned, despite
the significant obstacles to its success. Many other once popular
management topics have trod the well-worn path from panacea to
48 LEADINGORGANIZATIONALLEARNING