- The need for a Legitimate Language
- Organistional Stories
- Procedures, and
- Company Paradigms
First, language is key to the learning and reflection of individuals. The problem arises when sharing ones knowledge, taking the individuals tacit knowledge and making it explicit for others to consume. The problem arises that some knowledge can only be expressed with the individuals vocabulary. So to recognise any new business opportunity might require an innovative and new vocabulary.
Organisational Stories
Secondly all organisations have stories of various kinds as well as anecdotal history of management. These constitutes corporate memory or commonsense in understanding about the individual environment within an organsiation and allows individuals to regulate their behaviour accordingly. Many stories are also coloured by personal experience and anecdotal evidence. Where this become a barrier is when you get stories which relate to an activity that someone has done before and they are not there anymore. Giving some indication that if you what to follow that path, it has been done before and failed so don't try unless you want to fail.
Procedures
The third knowledge barrier involved procedures, the double-edged sword of knowledge management. On one hand the process provide improved productivity gains but on the other hand it stifles innovation. An example is with products which are created across different work groups. ie with the development of the Sharp's pocket organiser, it required engineering staffs from a least three distinct technical milieus and groups. The problem arises that most processes are not designed to work across these areas and budgetary control usually does not allow for the utilisation of resources for other work group purposes.
Company Paradigms
Finally the last barrier to knowledge creation is the most fundamental: company paradigms. In general, paradigms socialise new organisational members, getting them to line up behind the current thinking of the company. Paradigms have the power to make or break knowledge creation, they determine the legitimacy of personal knowledge within an organisation. Personal knowledge that conforms with the paradigm will be quickly embraced by colleagues; nonconformist attempts to justify personal beliefs are often met with skepticism.
Summary
When any or all four barriers are present, individual insights may never make it through the whole process of knowledge creation. Ideas, arguments, concepts are killed and don't make it into successful products or services.
If new, innovative language cannot be accepted then tacit knowledge will be lost; alternatively, stories of past failures may paralyse members of the company. When individuals beat their heads against the proverbial brick wall they get to a stage point where they often decide to stop contributing new ideas. Like many organisations they become part of the passive participants, or reach a point and leave - only to compete with the company from outside.
These point highlight the fact that knowledge management is a whole lot more than the information and technology being used. Knowledge management is managing the most expensive resource in a company, their people it about the investment and management of the resource which returns the interest in payment of increased organisational knowledge.
