Leadership in Action: Knowledge Management - A New Challenge for Leaders

Knowledge Management: A New Challenge for Leaders

Pamela S. Mayer

Perhaps the greatest challenge of leadership is to grow the organization's intellectual assets and ensure that employees can use the knowledge necessary for the enterprise to thrive. This process of creating and sharing is as much social as it is technical. Leaders, therefore, may have to change their behavior. They must pay more attention to business processes that are largely implicit rather than meticulously mapped out. They must identify ways for knowledge management to be integrated into the organizational structure and patterns of interaction. They must have a greater understanding of the social architecture of their organizations.

Business schools too often prepare managers ...