BUSINESS RESEARCH

Build Your Personal Knowledge Infrastructure to ‘Stay in the Know’

As senior executives grapple with the size, pace and complexity of modern organisations, it’s their job to stay abreast of all the important matters and developments going on around them. To make the best decisions, executives need to be masters at acquiring, organising, and applying useful knowledge – whilst filtering out the noise.

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November 2015

New technology, big data and sophisticated dashboards are often pushed as a panacea for knowledge management. But as new research confirms, these tools and technologies are only part of the solution for ‘staying in the know’. The most effective executives understand this and supplement technology with relationships and routines to build a ‘personal knowledge infrastructure’. These include:

  1. Making time to think and reflect: For example, using commuting time to scan the news or to reflect on the day ahead. Executives should also make time to attend conferences and networking events to develop a broader view of the business environment.
  2. Interacting with staff and customers: This might involve conducting periodic review meetings; dropping by other people’s offices to ask quick questions and share ideas; implementing an open-door policy; walking around the office floor to have spontaneous one-to-one conversations or make key observations.
  3. Building a network of trusted “advisors”: Cultivating a wide network of relationships (both formal and informal) is essential to staying in the know – mainly because it helps executives to triangulate information which leads to more useful insights. Some of these relationships may be highly strategic, e.g. nurturing relationships with consultants, politicians or local leaders – or may be a small group of trusted peers who are facing similar challenges.

Sources: Nicolini, D., Korica, M. and Ruddle, K. (2015) Staying in the Know, MIT Sloan Management Review, June 2; McDermott, R. (1999) Why Information Technology Inspired But Cannot Deliver Knowledge Management, California Management Review, 41(4), 103-117.

Referenced techniques

Technique

Knowledge Capital

The concept reviews the critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to knowledge transfer and intellectual capital. It also presents a compilation of possible and potential benefits and offers selective resources for further exploration.

Technique

Knowledge Management

This concept provides a review and interpretation of previous work on knowledge management and offers a comprehensive account of benefits achieved by properly managing knowledge, implementation information and success factors.

Technique

Management by Walking Around

The term management by wandering around (MBWA) refers to a style of business management which involves managers wandering around, in an unstructured manner, through the workplace(s) to check with employees about the status of ongoing work. The concept explores the benefits and drawbacks of this practice in organisations.

Technique

Social Network Analysis

The concept reviews the development of social network analysis, its origins, and main contributors. It introduces the basic concepts and methods of social network analysis, their capabilities and limitations, as well as their business applications.

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