An evaluation of democracy: how it can help you to think about knowledge governance

Knowledge management is interdisciplinary! Knowledge management is cultural! Knowledge management is implicit!

These are the issues which are relevant to me when talking about knowledge management. It is a very complex discipline which should be threatened with care when developing and implementing such initiatives in businesses. Nonetheless, it is essential in a competitive and fast-changing environment to have access to the latest knowledge in order to make innovative decisions and one way to have access to it is that the holders of critical knowledge should have the abilities and skills to exchange it. Can we do this by 'just' launching a Wiki, a SharePoint application, or other social media tools? No, these are just temporary means of doing the job. On a long term, businesses should focus on a way more complex issue in order to survive on a long term and that is governance.

For a while now I am closely following the discussions about governance, and I am particularly interested in a governance model that is increasingly showing signs of failure. It is difficult to know exactly why and how, because we have been a part of that governance system for such a long time - and over time it changed in different forms. I am talking about democracy. The following video is a documentary about why it is failing and there are some issues which could be very useful when thinking about 'knowledge' governance model for businesses, because in order to dare to share, people need to have comfort in it and this comfort can, among other things, come out of being transparent. More about these issues in this video

Governance model for innovation

I recently visited one of the biggest Danish companies. I met with the head of a department who is taking care of information and knowledge sharing activities across boundaries. This department is tapping into all the different departments in order to get to know what the needs are and where potential resides. Additionally, the company believes that in order to become innovative in the industry, it should embed cross-border collaboration. In other words, the company is also tapping into information and knowledge bases from external activities (such as universities and research centers).

I was very pleased to hear that this company was trying to out-perform and out-learn other competitors through a learning and innovation strategy, because I believe in the following steps for governing innovation:

Staff members should have the latest information and knowledge.  As a result, they are able to make sense and decide over new opportunities and problems in a fast way.  The faster the company can act, the better the company can out-perform and out-learn its competitors. Eventually, this results in innovation. Innovation is the same as stepping into new and unknown territory where you should have the newest information and knowledge to make sense of what could happen.

I believe that information and knowledge management activities are crucial in generating innovation and it was clear that the company saw itself competing based on its ability to innovate in an industry that is being pushed to change by individuals, groups and governments. For this company, information and knowledge is coming from internal and external collaboration. As a result, the company is making sense and decides over new opportunities and problems through fragmented and distributed knowledge. In order to manage such a process, I believe that the company should adapt a governance model which is more based on communication and norms, rather than the storage of information and knowledge. This company was moving to such a model!

However, within the company information and knowledge management activities were highlighted as activities on which the company wanted to save money. If this is the reaction of many companies - to save costs on activities that do not show value in euros or dollars on the short term - experts in information and knowledge management need to make sure companies will be well informed about the consequences of their decisions.

Could this be the work of an independent consultant in a discipline that is under serious challenges during a period of economic downturn?