Abstract
I picked up Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow with some trepidation. After all, its author, Frank Leistner, is Chief Knowledge Officer at SAS Institute. And I’ve read enough books on knowledge management to know the limitations they often have. Too often, knowledge management texts treat knowledge as something that can be made explicit, packaged in a database, and circulated more or less unproblematically around an organization. That is, they mistake information, which can be codified and made explicit, for knowledge, which cannot be codified because it is tacit, shared, and realized in activity.
But I shouldn’t have worried. Leistner knows the distinction well. In fact, he argues that knowledge management is a misnomer: Knowledge cannot be managed because it is connected to prior experiences and exists “only in the context of the mind” (p. 4). But, he says, you can manage knowledge flow: “You can enable a flow by creating an environment that people find safe, attractive, and efficient and that motivates them to share their knowledge. This could be either face-to-face or by recording relevant information that can be used by others to re-create knowledge in their frame of reference” (p. 10). So Leistner turns to the question of how to build not a knowledge management system but a sociotechnical environment in which people feel free and motivated to share what they know. “Managing the flow,” he tells us, “is just as much about creating conditions that will make sharing more likely as it is about trying to have a direct influence on people” (pp. 17–18).
Granted, this argument is a bit undercooked in the theoretical sense. But it serves its purpose, which is to help ground Leistner’s community-oriented approach to knowledge flow. Leistner briefly cites a few people in communities-of-practice research, such as Etienne Wenger, but he mostly focuses on articulating practical principles for developing a living, breathing environment that (a) encourages people to share their knowledge with others who need it and (b) helps knowledge seekers to find the right people to contact. Leistner illustrates this argument throughout with ToolPool, a knowledge-flow initiative—what professional communicators would characterize as a community-based technical documentation system—that he instituted at SAS.
Leistner carefully takes us through the steps of developing such an environment, providing frequent examples, scenarios, and self-assessment questions. These steps demonstrate how deeply Leistner has thought about the social and organizational dynamics that underlie successful knowledge flow. In fact, throughout most of the book, he focuses on these dynamics and very little on the technical implementation. In Chapter 2, for instance, he begins by discussing how to define such an initiative’s need and scope; how to assemble a proper team for this initiative; and how to calibrate a strategy based on the leadership, technical infrastructure, processes, and culture within the organization. Chapter 3 discusses how to establish the roles of key people who form the nucleus of the initiative, particularly knowledge intermediaries, who turn stories into knowledge that can be circulated and curated (p. 49). Such knowledge intermediaries include knowledge brokers, knowledge stewards, and knowledge researchers. Leistner describes these three types of intermediaries, discussing their unique contributions and how to identify and support them. (He does not mention technical communicators here, but they seem like naturals for such roles.) In Chapter 4, Leistner turns to the basic requirements for successful knowledge-flow management, which include passionate initiative support, culture, trust, and executive support. Once again, he goes beyond description, counseling us on how to grow (and effectively hire) our way into these requirements if they’re not already in place. And Chapter 5 discusses the “internal marketing” that an organization needs in order to build a thriving community. At each point, Leistner emphasizes that knowledge flow is not a technical problem but an organizational one.
Leistner has also thought through the many barriers that can keep such an initiative from succeeding. In Chapter 6, he lists 10 human barriers, focusing especially on the top 3: “lack of time” (when people refuse to prioritize knowledge flow), “missing knowledge management awareness” (when people believe that sharing knowledge is not part of their job), and “missing awareness of knowledge” (when people believe that they don’t actually have knowledge worth sharing). Each of these can kill the communication and sharing that underpin knowledge flow. Leistner provides experienced advice for addressing each.
Another sort of barrier is addressed in Chapter 7, “The Technology Trap.” To my relief, Leistner does not get bogged down in discussions of XML, JSON, and other specifics of technical implementation. To the contrary, Leistner seems uninterested in such specifics, focusing still on the dynamics that make knowledge flow successful across technologies and media. He warns against seeing the technical implementation as a repository of knowledge: It is best regarded as “a repository of pointers to the one who knows” (p. 115). That is, people’s contributions to the repository are actually pieces of information, not knowledge. Knowledge flows when users see each other’s contributions, figure out who has knowledge about what subjects, and get into a dialogue with each other (p. 116). In fact, he says, contributions that seem useless in the “repository view” can be key in the “pointer view”: An incomplete contribution could lead to direct contact in which “more of the tacit knowledge could flow” (p. 117). Indeed, I saw this argument as being the heart of the book, explaining better than anywhere else what Leistner means by knowledge flow and demonstrating the organizational dimension that is so often elided from such discussions.
But how do we know whether a knowledge-flow initiative is working? In Chapter 8, Leistner addresses the question of measuring and analyzing knowledge flow. But even here, he avoids the easy route of relying on simple numbers, numbers that may not describe the connections he is trying to facilitate within an organization. “Most of the time,” he cautions, “a measure will be more of an indicator of a potential knowledge flow, not a direct quantification” (p. 137). Such measures include those of participation, value, culture, and quality, each of which Leistner treats as a feedback indicator, a starting point for tweaking this intersubjective activity of knowledge sharing rather than an objective number to be crunched. In the final chapter, Leistner turns to how knowledge sharing might evolve in the future, focusing particularly on issues that have captured the attention of technical communicators: internal social media, community management, and future developments in specializations and infrastructures.
Overall, Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow impresses. It is a sharp, hands-on guide that tells readers how to develop a knowledge-sharing community within a large organization. And when we think about it that way, some of the implications for technical communicators become clear. Although Leistner doesn’t use terms such as technical communication and technical documentation, we in technical communication can find much to like about and learn from this text.
For instance, working technical communicators will recognize the issues of community management, user buy-in, and management buy-in that have affected documentation efforts over the last 15 years or so—and they’ll find plenty of advice that they can easily apply to their own long-term documentation initiatives, especially ones that are crowdsourced. Those who have relied on technical communication books on community management, such as Anne Gentle’s (2009) Conversation and Community, may find that this book provides a welcome second view. Workplace researchers will recognize the book as a response to businesses’ large-scale, long-term shift toward building organizational networks that coordinate specialists via constant mutual adjustment. If they read this book across work such as by Castells (2003), Heckscher (2007), Potts (2014), and Sun (2012), they may come away with a stronger understanding of the delicate organizational dynamics that make such networks possible. Finally, technical communication instructors in particular may find much to teach their students about creating conditions for successful technical documentation in organizations. (In fact, I regret that I read this book after already placing my book orders for my fall technical writing class.) Leistner’s book-long example, shorter scenarios, and checklists lend themselves well to class exercises, and his theory-light approach makes the book easy to read—although there’s enough air in part of the book that students may sometimes find themselves skimming to the next heading.
In sum, although Leistner doesn’t aim this book at technical communicators per se, it promises to be a valuable tool in our toolbox. If you’re looking for a solid text on nurturing and developing knowledge sharing, or better understanding it or teaching students to do it, take a look.