Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow

CHAPTER 10

Final Thoughts

When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists. Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared. The worst is one who is despised. If you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy. The Master doesn’t talk, he acts. When his work is done, the people say, “ Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!”

—Lao-tzu (ca. 551-479 BCE), Tao te Ching, Chapter 17.

 

How can you master knowledge flow management?

If you made it through the book to this point, you might be a little disappointed that I did not provide you with a silver bullet on how to master your organizational knowledge flow. I do not think there is such a thing. But to master anything, you need a lot of prac tice. And to practice, you first need to get started. So while you might not have gotten a ready-to-run solution, I hope that you take away a range of guiding and key principles that will help to master the flow over time.

Some of the elements that I have mentioned might seem rather simple. In reality, they are not necessarily simple to implement. But you will need to keep most of the elements in mind all the time.

• Never forget the human element of knowledge flow management. Do not get carried away and let technology take the full lead.

• Always be aware that you will need multiple drivers to get those experts in your organization influenced to feed their most valuable knowledge into your knowledge flow. Do not be shy of marketing to influence them.

• If you ...