In today's fast-paced business environment, organizations must continually renew their strategies. The first step is communication
פורסם: 24.5.20 צילום: יח"צ
The three components of the title to this article are the three focuses companies must maintain, if they want to succeed in today's dynamic business environment.
In the past it was enough to develop a strategy and simply follow it for a few years. In those days, executives would spend a long time developing a strategic plan. The knowledge necessary for this task was kept at the top level of the company. Line workers were not expected to ask strategic questions; instead, they were told to work on tasks generated from the strategy developed at the top.
In large corporations, executives would outsource strategic planning to management consultants, who created a strategic plan for them. In small companies, especially in privately owned ones, the top executive would make the strategic decisions himself. (It was mainly "himself," and not "herself," at the time.) The strategic plan was translated into objectives for middle managers, who then communicated them to supervisors for implementation with their teams. This was a lengthy process. Sometimes it took more than a year, during which time the workers were not involved at all in the strategic process.
Those days are gone for a few reasons. First, things change so fast that strategies need to be reconsidered often. Second, knowledge workers hate to work for companies that do not involve them in the strategic process. Third, strategy making can no longer be outsourced, since in a fast-changing environment it is the organization's most important core competency.
How does an organization continually renew its strategy? Through effective management of knowledge. And knowledge management is possible only in organizations that intentionally create communication environments. Thus we have the full circle: from communication to knowledge to strategy.
Why is knowledge management key to strategic renewal? Because the best way to adapt to a fast-changing business environment is by linking the islands of knowledge that exist throughout the organization. This ability to adapt is what strategic renewal is all about, and it is an outcome of collaborative wisdom. Incorporating all the knowledge and perspectives within your organization helps you create the future.
Why is communication key to knowledge management? Because knowledge becomes productive when it flows. What Peter Drucker calls "high productivity of knowledge" is achieved when people share knowledge. Conversations have become the most value-adding activity in the organization — within teams, among teams, and even beyond the borders of the organization.
Information technology has been a key enabler to knowledge management. But knowledge cannot be easily captured in information systems. IT is most effective in helping organizations manage knowledge when it allows for virtual communication environments that let people carry on conversations without physical constraints. The most important knowledge is often tacit and cannot be easily documented, but technology makes it possible for people to communicate that knowledge throughout the organization.
One effective tool for promoting strategic conversations is a "knowledge café," or ongoing virtual conference. The knowledge café allows people to participate in a communication environment that is at once both intimate and geographically dispersed. It lets people virtually gather at the same time and place, helping to create and communicate collaborative knowledge.
As a management consultant, I find I am most effective when I serve as host to a knowledge café in a client organization, thus helping strategy emerge naturally instead of trying to plan it mechanically. And I have a personal strategy, too. When I grow old and no longer am able to travel the way management consultants need to, I will sit at my desk at home, virtually hosting knowledge cafés around the world.
*Edna Pasher, Ph.D is founder of Edna Pasher & Associates (Herzliya, Israel), a management consulting firm, and the Knowledge in Action series of international conferences.
First appeared on Exec, May 1998
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