We have strong opinions about the role of sponsorship in KM/knowledge services, and we work hard to obtain sponsorship for the work we do.

Let’s turn that around and connect the value of KM/knowledge services sponsorship to the larger organization (in this case, to the huge multinational financial institutions currently on the firing line).

Colleague Kate Pugh has contributeed an important comment at The Great Debate, the Reuters discussion site.

In How Big Banks can Fix Their Leadership Blindspots (disclosure: Kate and I are both faculty members for Columbia University’s M.S. in Information and Knowledge Strategy program), Kate offers good advice to the leaders in the financial community.

She particularly recommends three specific steps. The second and the third steps Kate offers are, it seems to me, critically important:

Use dialogue, not interrogation:  Use conversation and dialogue, not just one-way knowledge-exchange, to investigate the root causes of rogue trading and other mysteries. By including a diversity of voices in the conversation – who also ask questions and test ideas – you’ll be expanding total perspectives and hearing things that you didn’t even know you didn’t know.  Make it visual. Flip charts, electronic desktops, and even Lego blocks help. Importantly, you must shift the tone from witch-hunt to fact-finding. Curiosity trumps accusation as a way to build transparency.

Expand your conveners: Build an army of “conveners of conversation.” Look for those who are good at bringing people together, have good networks, and are inherently curious.  Select for those traits in your leadership team, as well.

 It’s Kate’s first step that really resonates with me. Those of us dealing with leadership and management in the KM/knowledge services world must give some thought to how we get this message across to senior management:

Be a knowledge advocate: Executive transitions are vulnerable to knowledge loss, not only because of departures and closed lips (while people jockey for power), but also because of simple misunderstandings about language.  Executives have blindspots with regard to who knows what, what systems we can trust, and what it all means in today’s gyrating markets.  Your job is to advocate for transparency.  Create a short list of blindspots. Develop specific knowledge-flow priorities, and corral your leadership team around these.

What do you recommend? How do you – as a knowledge strategist – ensure that leaders with responsibility for enterprise-wide decision making understand and, more important, implement knowledge development and knowledge sharing (KD/KS) throughout the corporate structure?

Kudos to Kate Pugh for this thought-provoking essay. Read the full post here or use this link: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/10/18/how-big-banks-can-fix-their-leadership-blindspots/.

- October 25, 2011