Think about the US Government struggling to turn raw data into wisdom when there are bits of information about Middle Eastern men attending flight school and more bits about some of the same Middle Eastern men buying one-way airplane tickets!

Even the US Government, with all of its resources, was not able to turn information into wisdom and thereby stop 9/11 from happening. In the example introduced by Miles Corbett and David Bowden, their oil company client has employees all over the world who need to learn from one another.

Transition Associates built a dynamic, learning repository on the web where employees can go to get the answer to their questions. The engineer in Venezuela can instantly learn from the engineer in Azerbaijan.

When you read this statement you might think, "Of course. Everybody does that." Not quite. This is not a simple key word search. Knowledge management involves text-mining tools that parse multiple documents and dynamically create a catalog or taxonomy of related topics and then allows for real-time collaboration within those parsed documents.

Topic for Discussion: Can any company of any size benefit from the strategy we now call knowledge management?

Answer: Of course. While big firms are spending millions of dollars to aggregate information which can lead to insight, knowledge and finally wisdom, even a one-person company can use this idea. You must ask yourself: what do you know that every employee needs to know? What does each of your employees know? How can you know what they know?

Topic for Discussion: What will keep companies from committing to knowledge management?

Answer: Turf. The pitiful need for bad managers to hold close to the vest their hard-fought-for data will keep them from opening their files to the rest of the company. This is exactly what happened in the US Government and it will happen in any organization that doesn't put a high value on the sharing of information. The leader of any company that embarks on the deployment of knowledge management will be challenged by small-thinking employees who will try to protect their job by keeping what they know to themselves.

You think about it: What steps can you take now to move your company's raw data into position so all employees can use it to make the best decisions and do their best work for your customers?