It is generally accepted that the practice of knowledge
management (KM) debuted sometime in the 20th Century. Of course,
the leadership and management focus of the last hundred years
was mostly concerned with expanding and controlling the physical
and mechanical properties of economic production. Management
practices involving people, process and technology to
fundamentally advance the intellectual capacity of people and
effectiveness of knowledge-intensive organizations became
prevalent only in the second half of the century.
The 20th Century framework of business thinking was derived
from reductionism, mechanics, hierarchy and linear physical
models. These models produced the most spectacular economic
growth in the history of civilization. However, in rapidly
expanding knowledge-based economies, these rigid, deductive
models are not meeting the needs of business leaders or
stakeholders. Rather, it has been discovered that entirely new,
holistic, social, biological, networked structures offer far
better models of how the knowledge-based world actually works.
These improved, inductive models elaborate how economic growth
is sustained and improved in knowledge-intensive societies.
Unfortunately, as is always the case, un-learning the past is
extraordinarily difficult. This is particularly true for
established organizations striving to transform into
knowledge-based organizations. Open-loop archetypes, technology
preponderance, tangible focus, machine organizational metaphors
and pedantic training systems, for example, are just some of the
21st Century knowledge-based enterprise artifacts that trace
their problematic origins from 20th Century models. Below are
further examples.
|
20th Century - Physical
Focus
|
21st Century -
Knowledge Focus
|
Economic
Advantages
|
|
Centralized
|
Distributed
|
Performance
|
|
Repositories
|
Networks
|
Flow
|
|
Control
|
Relationships
|
Ecosystems
|
|
Tiers
|
Adaptive
|
Self Organization
|
|
Help Desks
|
Communities
|
Sustainability
|
|
Portals
|
Architectures
|
Robustness
|
|
Content
|
Taxonomies
|
Capacity
|
|
Outcomes
|
Drivers
|
Agility, Velocity
|
|
Governance
|
Leadership
|
Growth, Innovation
|
|
Training
|
Learning
|
Competence
|
|
Tangibles
|
Intangibles |
Value |
With respect to the specific leadership behaviors that need
to be fundamentally transformed, the chart below outlines some
of the more important ones.
|
Leadership
|
|
20th Century -
Physical Focus
|
21st Century -
Knowledge Focus
|
Economic
Advantages
|
|
Autocratic
|
Democratic
|
Individual Focus
|
|
Controller
|
Facilitator
|
Remove Barriers
|
|
Dominant
|
Collaborative
|
Enabling
|
|
Directive, Director
|
Coach
|
Lead by Example
|
|
Technocrat
|
Visionary
|
Shared Vision
|
|
Micro-management,
Politics
|
Management by Objectives
|
Focus on People, Relationships and Customers
|
Through deliberate and focused effort, organizations have
begun to adopt a 21st Century focus in leading their
knowledge-intensive environments. The KM Cluster® NYC will
closely examine this spectacular economic and
behavioural transformation.
By popular demand of the local KM Cluster community, an
outstanding line-up of business thought leaders, executives,
practitioners and experts has been assembled in a day-long
format. The motive is to colonize the theme of Knowledge
Leadership. The objective is to derive the critical behaviors,
models, frameworks and Next Practices™ essential
to this knowledge-based transformation and to sharply improve
the value creating capacity of all knowledge-intensive
environments and leaders.
