As the technologies of the Web
come to be deployed on the enterprise network, IT managers and business
department heads have a large menu of possible implementations to
consider. Social networking and collaboration tools are proliferating
within the enterprise, but even as the scale of this adoption threatens
to overwhelm corporate control, the Web itself is now showing us a
proven model of smaller groups, more tightly focused, and more
intrinsically self-controlling.
“Its success indicates a trend among newer social
networking sites, which are gaining traction not by focusing on the
mass-popularity model that made News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace famous, but
by helping users connect with smaller, more specific, groups.” See Social Networking Goes Niche
Within the overarching discipline of
knowledge management, the role of the “tacit worker” in the knowledge
company is beginning to gain prominence. A McKinsey examination of workplace tasks
in developed economies highlights an evolutionary shift from routine,
non-creative interactions to complex interactions that require workers
to solve ambiguities based on experience or tacit knowledge.
Against
such a starkly definite shift, the need to make knowledge available on
demand becomes an IT challenge, and a cultural adjustment. Gartner reckons that non-routine interactions calling for tacit knowledge will double in number between 2006 and 2011.
Eric Suave describes the educational and management requirements for us in his article, “Informal Knowledge Transfer”:
“The reality is that in many industries in which
situations change rapidly, formal learning once or twice a year doesn’t
provide employees with the experience or knowledge they need to find
ongoing success on the job. This means that organizations must revamp
their budgets and shift their resources from formal learning settings
to informal situations in which the majority of learning actually takes
place.
“As the importance of informal knowledge transfer
grows, organizations are looking to communities of practice (CoPs) as a
solution. [...] CoPs build on existing formal content tools, such as
portals, learning management systems, document management, content
management, and knowledge management, as well as team and productivity
tools.”
Suave says that Gartner calls the community
of practice model one of the five best practices for increasing
organizational agility. How is the CoP created, and why?
“Organizations that can identify and link experts who
can share their tacit knowledge benefit by providing higher quality
solutions that are delivered faster and at a lower overall cost. It’s
applicable in markets that are challenged with business-critical
situations, including customer support, IT help desk, strategic account
management, team selling, professional services, and R&D.
“So just how is tacit knowledge captured? Channeling
informal discussions into a collaborative workspace—behind the
scenes—is a great way to begin. It replaces ad-hoc interactions like
shouting over the cube and blasting email threads with a single,
well-organized place where people can work together as teams that may
extend to customers and partners.” See How Do You Capture Tacit Knowledge?
The notion of the tacit worker bears a
striking similarity to the concept of empowering knowledge workers to
effect change and result at customer touchpoints. But it reaches much
further than this, and echoes the “fractal” notion of all the elements
of a company representing it totally, at all turns. As blogger and
software engineer Gary Sherman puts it:
“Everything we do as an organization affects how we
are perceived, and in ways we didn’t envision. As Kathy Sierra and Seth
Godin commonly point out – we’re all marketers. We commonly talk about
how activities such as customer support drive sales. In this case,
marketing (website development) has a direct affect on recruiting.”
From How the source code of our website affects recruiting
The rise of the tacit worker points to an
even broader evolution: as the enterprise strives to become “flat”, in
emulation of the Web, rather than tiered, any worker at any time may be
called upon to know something pivotal, or to discover it in real time
from someone else. Challenge indeed – and opportunity – for knowledge
management, and IT, and leadership.
