Saving Personal Networks

Tragic Events Reinforce the Need to Collaborate and Share Knowledge

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, many companies are taking another look at the way they manage their intellectual assets. Plans to recover data in systems and servers are often (but not often enough) in place. But the tragic deaths of employees — unacknowledged links in the information supply chain — almost always mean that valuable corporate knowledge and skillsets are forever lost along with them. Although lives can never be replaced, knowledge management (KM) practices may lessen the loss of the intellectual assets that companies need to stay in business.

Tacit knowledge — the relationships, understandings, and information tidbits that employees evolve to do their job — is rarely captured. Even before the disaster, getting employees — especially sales and management staff — up to speed often took months as they built the personal networks necessary to be successful.

According to Steve Cranford, founder of KPMG Consulting's KM Solutions practice and now CEO of KSolutions Inc., KM can help companies map relationships, manage processes, and understand how people are using information so that these valuable personal information networks are not lost in times of crisis. A multitude of tools are available, but he stresses that it's not about tools. He believes that a serious KM implementation involves a fundamental business change: Capturing knowledge must be integrated in employees' day-to-day processes, which involves executive buy-in and incentives to participate.

With travel plans curtailed and companies questioning putting all their employees in one place, the reliance on face-to-face meetings and conferences has been tested. But another benefit to KM is that with collaboration and knowledge sharing, time and space become less of an issue for employees distributed across the enterprise who need to work together on projects.

One of the chief drawbacks for KM projects, especially in an economic downturn, has been the difficulty in measuring immediate ROI. But now the question is no longer can companies afford to implement KM, but can they afford not to?

— Michelle Nichols

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