Title: Knowledge Unplugged
Author: Kluge, Stein & Licht
Published by: McKinsey & Company
Year: 2001
Date reviewed: 11.01
ISBN: 0-333-96376-8

Back in the mid ’90s, management consultants, business school academics and computer system sales people started throwing a new question at top management – "Who’s responsible for managing knowledge in your company?" Management fidgeted in its chair, fiddled with its corporate pencil, and thought of replies like "No-one", "I haven’t got a clue", or "What on earth is she talking about?" So is Knowledge Management just another passing management fad, or is there actually something of value we can distill out of the sales pitch?

Knowledge Unplugged is consultants McKinsey & Company’s effort to persuade us that there is. The book’s premise is that as well as managing the three "traditional" factors of production – land, labour and capital – we also need to manage Knowledge. We might counter by pointing out there are many intangible, or "soft", entities or processes we should manage – relationships, communications, brand identity, customer loyalty, the list could be a long one. The neat trick (and of course you’ve seen it coming) is that – yes! – these are ALL Knowledge!

You’ll have guessed by now that I’m not generally a fan of management fads, or the books purveying them. There are too many vested commercial interests, and all too often little or no real intellectual foundation, for them to add anything to our understanding of the world. But I’m pleased to say that Knowledge Unplugged does give us some useful pointers in trying to find our way around this rather fuzzy concept.

The book is based on an analysis of 40 companies, mostly manufacturing, combined with a collection of over 100 "knowledge management techniques" distilled from the literature and discussions with specialists and practioners in the field. Examples of these techniques: establishing formal networks with suppliers, having company-wide process standards, job rotation in product development, and so on. Each technique in turn was expressed in five behaviours ranging from a "least intensive" to a "most intensive" way of implementing the technique. One example will show the general idea:

Technique    Recognition of innovative ideas

Levels of implementation

• not institutionalised
• personally by the superior only
• in front of the entire department
• in front of the entire unit/company
• in public

The authors then rated their 40 companies in order of overall performance, using a combination of long- and short-term financial and process indicators. Applying their model of Knowledge Management, they established that the top performers did markedly more KM than the bottom performers.

Out of their studies they distilled six characteristics of knowledge that distinguish it from other assets. Knowledge is

• subjective
• transferable
• embedded
• self-reinforcing
• perishable, and
• spontaneous

The book looks at each of these in depth, drawing examples from the participating companies, and seeking to persuade us that its analysis of knowledge as a resource susceptible to being managed is worthwhile.

While I am sure that any number of alternative models could be constructed, the authors’ particular version does present a neat package. The book avoids any hard sell, but neither does it give any real advice on how to do KM. Presumably for confidentiality reasons none of the data underlying the survey is given, so we have to rely on the authors’ own analysis in support of their conclusions.

So my overall conclusion, in the role of self-confessed management technique sceptic, is that Knowledge Unplugged throws some interesting light on the concept of knowledge management, and provides a framework for discussion within an organisation that wants to go further down this road. My first thought on closing the book after reading the last page was "Not as bad as I’d feared". Praise indeed – and superbly edited!