Microsoft Word Tips and Tricks

Who’s who? More than anything else, staff want to get in touch with other staff. Most organizations are poor at facilitating such interactions.

Much has been made of knowledge management over the years. We’re all living in the knowledge society and economy and we’re all knowledge workers. But what is the foundation-the corner stone-of knowledge management?

There are two basic types of knowledge. Formal knowledge is found in books, reports and videos (this is what we call content). Informal knowledge resides in the head of the knowledge worker.

In a typical organization, it is often the informal knowledge that is the most valuable. It makes the sale, delivers the service, solves the support call, builds the brand. You just need to get to talk to the right person, quickly.

In the past, most organizations had pretty good solutions for the transfer of informal knowledge. The basic system was called apprenticeship, but there were many other structures put in place to make sure you got to talk to the right person.

Times have changed. The efficient transfer of informal knowledge now has to meet the following challenges:

1. The apprenticeship model has severely declined, if not become
extinct in many organizations.

2. The person you need to talk to is quite possibly not in the
same physical place as you are. (Historically, most of the people you needed were within walking distance.)

3. The person you need to talk to left last week. Who else really knows about this stuff?

4. Skills and knowledge keeps changing. The best person for this job only became the ‘best person’ four months ago. Outside her small team, nobody else knows that she’s so good.

5. Managers and other senior knowledge workers used to have support staff to help them find who they needed. Not anymore.

There is nothing more important for a knowledge organization than to quickly and efficiently connect the right people. It’s the foundation-the corner stone-of knowledge management. It is the foundation for success of the company of today-let alone the company of tomorrow. So, why do so many organizations do such a bloody awful job of it?

Because management is living in the past. It thinks the old networks and structures are sufficient to allow for the efficient flow of informal knowledge. That is simply not the case. And senior managers are often blind to the growing problem because for them it is not a problem.

I heard one CEO comment that he had no problem finding other people. That’s because his search engine was his secretary.

Time and time again, I have seen organizations invest heavily in intranet technologies, while almost totally ignoring the vital processes required to make the intranet a success. Basic staff directories are woefully maintained. Experts have no incentive to enter their details into ‘expert databases’.

To efficiently allow one knowledge worker find another, quality content is now required. In a modern organization, a skill or piece of knowledge that is not formally recorded is very difficult to communicate.

At the most basic level connecting two people means having an email address or telephone number. And if the telephone number is wrong …

Gerry McGovern
mailto:gerry@gerrymcgovern.com

www.gerrymcgovern.com

Technology does not replace the need for good management.

Without such management, technology can create more problems than it solves.

It’s hard to resist the easy option. Buy this customer relationship management (CRM) software, and you will efficiently and cost-effectively be able to manage your customer relationships. Buy this content management software, and you will be able to efficiently and cost-effectively manage your content.

Software does not manage. People manage. Software is a tool that can help you manage better, but it is not a manager. It is not strategic. Before you can manage customer relationships, you have to have relationships with your customers.

A person recently told me that their CRM software was great for sending lots to email offers and other marketing material to their customers. To them, this was what CRM was all about:
cost-effectively deluging (spamming) their customers with marketing and sales pitches.

It amazes me the amount of organizations out there that still believe that to create a better intranet or public website, all they need to do is choose the right content management software.
These organizations are not thinking about the quality and effectiveness of the content. They’ll employ junior people to put up this content, and then a couple of years later they’ll wonder where it all went wrong.

I’ve yet to meet an organization that has successfully implemented personalization either for their intranet or their public website. This is not because the concept of personalization is wrong. Properly implemented, it is a very sophisticated and powerful way to give customers what they want.

There are many reasons it fails miserably, however. One of them is that organizations feel that all they need to do is install this fancy software, turn it on, and, hey presto, a wonderful website emerges. No need to worry about the quality of the content. No need to worry about how well it is structured and organized. The magic software looks after all that.

I once spoke with a consultant who told me about working with the British military. Years ago, if you were becoming an officer, you were sent on a course about managing your office.
Part of the course involved learning how to manage your filing cabinet.

Then computers came along and the course was scrapped. Think about it. A computer has at least 100 “filing cabinets”. You need training in managing content far more if you have a computer. But you don’t get it because of this irrational exuberance about what technology can do.

Modern organizations are not professionally managing their content. Senior management often abdicate responsibility. They think that the Web is a technology challenge that they can hand over to IT.

Content management will become one of the key management skills of the 21st century. That’s because we live in a content-driven world.

Technology can support strategy. It can support managers as they do their jobs. But technology is not a strategy, and it is certainly not management.

Gerry McGovern
mailto:gerry@gerrymcgovern.com

  Content management solutions: Gerry McGovern
  http://www.gerrymcgovern.com

It has rarely made sense for a business to advertise its weaknesses. Until the Web, that is.

There is a book on Amazon called “Introducing Operations Management”. It has received a one-star average from readers.

One review begins: “I am a senior in college and I have used and read many, many textbooks but this is the worst one ever!”

Amazon sells books. The more books it sells the more money it makes. It doesn’t seem to make sense that Amazon should allow customers to come to its website and tell other potential customers not to buy certain books.

Progressive is a successful American auto insurance company. On its homepage it provides the latest auto rates for itself and its competitors. Progressive is often cheaper but I saw numerous occasions where it was the more expensive option. That doesn’t make sense, does it?

Hostelworld.com lets customers review the hostels they stay at.
Dumil hostel in London gets this review: “Manager was very nice and understood he was running the worst hostel ever.” Why does Hostel World allow this? Surely it is bad for business?

The truth is hard to come by, and it is particularly hard to come by when you want to buy something. We realize that most organizations that are selling to us are either exaggerating, omitting the truth, or outright lying.

That’s why hearing from other customers is so reassuring.
They’re on our side. Of course, we know that not every customer review is truthful, but once there’s enough of them, we can get a sense of the average-the collective intelligence.

“Dumil hostel is one of the best hostels in London for its price and area. We try to make sure that all our customers get more privacy and enjoy a pleasant stay,” the marketing material says.

However, one reviewer writes that, “This place was horrible!!! It was so dirty and I have never felt so unsafe in a place before.”

The Web customer is savvier, educated, less gullible, more sceptical. The Web is illustrating that there is a place for honest business.

Much marketing and advertising is about association. We see cool, happy and beautiful people using a particular product. The association is that if we buy this product we too will become cool, happy and beautiful.

The Web is different. Not totally different, but different all the same. The Web is where people go to be informed. We’re on the Web because we don’t believe the hype, because we want to get some more facts. We’re driven by logic not by impulse.

We trust the reviews of other customers because they’re like us, and we know that organizations lie to us. When we arrive at a website like progressive.com, we are surprised and impressed by its honesty.

Honesty is selling on the Web. Honest websites are not better because they are morally superior but because they are more believable and trustworthy. The customer has matured. The customer is better educated, better informed.

These are interesting times. Society is moving to another level of sophistication, and marketing must learn to follow.

Gerry McGovern
mailto:gerry@gerrymcgovern.com

More at www.gerrymcgovern.com