Shares thoughts on success and knowledge management

Information Outlook, May, 1999 by Laurence Prusak

On the topic of success, Prusak asserts that all librarians need to have ambition. "They need to seek involvements in their organizations that go beyond traditional library roles and impact the organization's core strategy and operations. They have to have a desire to understand how the organization works - strategies and priorities, who the key people are and what they do, how knowledge flows. They need to cultivate a professional business attitude and demeanor that fits the organization. It's important to be well read and up to date with top business books, management trends, and what's going on in the organization's industry."

Qualities to achieve this as well as characteristics to make librarians valuable to knowledge management initiatives include their strong "affiliative" skills. "They're interested in people. They're good at putting people together in a kind of matchmaker role, acting as 'knowledge coordinators.' They engender trust. They're very willing to give, to share before they get. Librarians are smart. They're intelligent. They have a wide range of interests. Another strength is that they're strong networkers. They invest a lot to keep groups and projects going. You could call them 'knowledge concierges.'

The whole trend toward virtualization of libraries runs counter to these strengths. You can't have trust and go beyond transactional relationships without face-to-face interaction.

Somewhat surprisingly, librarians' skills in taxonomy, classification, and organization of knowledge is not all that highly valued. Other groups believe they can do this. Since his latest book, Working Knowledge deals with knowledge management in organizations, the committee discussed this topic at length with Prusak. He stressed that people prefer to gather information and acquire knowledge from sources they trust and since trust is based on face to face communication, knowledge management strategies that rely on technology alone tend not to work. As Prusak stated, "people are hardwired to learn from people, not technology."

Corporate culture, however, is the key to predicting success of a knowledge management initiative. Knowledge sharing must be perceived to be valued by the corporate leadership. There are many ways to do this." Prusak warned however, that firms only change their culture as a result of facing death. He stated he has never seen a firm change its culture without also undergoing a dramatic change in leadership and referred to his list of "Eleven Sins of Knowledge Management".

"This tendency to rely on people however, positions the librarian in any organization to be a potentially effective knowledge leader in their institution. Librarians have a long history of putting together those with experience with those who need that knowledge. Their clients experience lead them to trust the librarian's judgment in these matters. Experience is knowledge leading to action; librarians have been engaged in this a long time.

Don't miss Laurence Prusak when he speaks at the General Session, Monday, June 7, from 9:00 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.